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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 



BOOKS BY PRESIDENT THWING 
ON COLLEGE SUBJECTS 

American Colleges : Their Students and Work 

Within College Walls 

The College Woman 

The American College in American Life 

College Administration 

The Choice of a College 

If I Were a College Student 

A Liberal Education and a Liberal Faith 

College Training and the Business Man 

Higher Education in America : a History 

Education in the Far East 

History of Education in the United States since the 

Civil War 
Universities of the World 

Letters from a Father to His Son Entering College 
Letters from a Father to His Daughter Entering 

College 
The Co-ordinate System of the Higher Education 
The American College: What it is and what it may 

become. 
Education According to Some Modern Masters. 
The Ministry: An Appeal to College Men 
The Training of Men for the World's Future 



7 THE 
COLLEGE GATEWAY 



BY 

CHARLES FRANKLYN THWING 

D.D., LL.D., LITT. D. 

President of Western Reserve 
University 



Second Series of Baccalaureate Discourses 




THE PILGRIM PRESS 

BOSTON CHICAGO 






V 



Copyright 1918 
By CHARLES F. THWING 



m ' 



THE PILGRIM PRESS 
BOSTON 



,1 



•CU5153S4C/ 



PREFATORY NOTE 

In the year 1903, I published " A Liberal 
Education and a Liberal Faith," a volume of 
Baccalaureate addresses given from 1891 to 
that time. The present volume includes the 
addresses given between 1903 and 1918. 

To the students with whom I have lived 
and worked and played these many years, 
and who first heard these addresses at their 
Commencement, I dedicate this new volume. 
Without, as well as within, college walls, 
may they find that their highest aspirations 
are, through daily experience, becoming solid 
convictions. 

C. F. T. 

Western Reserve University, Cleveland 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Prefatory Note v 

I Trustees for Humanity 3 

II Entering into Life 25 

III Sympathy the Solution of the Social 

Problem 45 

Some Rewards of a College Training 63 
The Needs of American Life which the 
College and the College Graduate 

should Fill .....* 81 

VI Being Rich Without Riches 101 

VII The American College Student and the 

Universities of the World . . . .125 

The Four-Square Man 135 

Public Disorder and the Higher Educa- 
tion 151 

X The Interpretation of Life 171 

XI College Life a Prophecy of Life Itself 187 
XII The Greatness and Simplicity of Re- 
ligion 205 

XIII The Looking Backward of Character 

and of Achievement 221 

XIV The Responsibility of the Individual 

for the Community 239 

XV Effects of the War on College Women 261 



I 

TRUSTEES FOR HUMANITY 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

Chapter I 

TRUSTEES FOR HUMANITY 

[1904] 

" We were allowed of God to be put in trust with the 
gospel." — 1 Thessalonians ii : 4. 

THE word gospel may be interpreted in a 
way either narrow or broad. It may 
be made to refer to the good news of a 
special and signal revelation; it may be ap- 
plied to the incarnation of Christ, to the words 
which Christ spoke, to the works which he did. 
The gospels represent the Gospel. This mean- 
ing is clear, definite, narrow. The word may 
also be used in a sense broad and no less clear. 
It may be made to refer to the whole cosmic 
process which moves from God manward, and 
from man Godward. It includes both the 
heart of the Eternal declaring itself in time, 
and the mind of Omniscience striving for hu- 
man betterment. It stands for the truth of the 

[3] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

creation — that it is good, and also for the 
promise that there shall be no night and no 
more sea, neither sorrow nor crying. It repre- 
sents the fact of the lamb slain from the foun- 
dation of the world, and also embraces the 
manifestation of the lamb on Calvary. The 
Gospel as a force in this sense stands for love, 
for love as broad as man's need and as full as 
God's power. The Gospel is a realm as wide 
as humanity. The Gospel as grace is favor, 
forgiveness, help, limitless in time and space. 
The Gospel as doctrine is teaching to be inter- 
preted, known, accepted by all. The Gospel 
on the human side is the soul's re-birth, the 
soul's growth, the soul's re-making, the soul's 
righteousness, the soul's optimism. The Gos- 
pel on the divine side is God's passion, God's 
leading and lifting, God's furtherance of human 
well-being. The Gospel is truth to be known, 
justice to be declared, right to be done, duty 
to be accepted, love to be given and received. 
Of such a gospel prophets have prophesied, 
poets sung, apostles preached, and for such a 
gospel have the glorious army of the martyrs 
died. 

These two interpretations, the one narrow, 
the one broad, are yet not antagonistic. They 
supplement each other. The lamb that was 
[4] 



TRUSTEES FOR HUMANITY 

slain on Calvary was slain from the foundation 
of the world. The Gospel preached by Christ 
and his apostles is the gospel of the good news 
of righteousness, of truth and of duty, declared 
by every prophet from the beginning until now. 
The beatitudes of the Fifth of Matthew are the 
expression of eternal principles of righteousness, 
of pity, of love and of purity. The whole 
Sermon on the Mount is a declaration of love 
and of justice, as eternal as time and as wide 
in application as human need. The forces 
for human betterment, embodied in and de- 
clared by the Christ, preached by apostles, 
embodied in holy writings, are the very same 
forces which are regnant in history and 
dominant in human affairs. 

Of such a gospel, broad, high, profound, 
man is put in trust. Of such a gospel, broad, 
high, profound, the college graduate is put in 
trust in a special significance. 

For the Gospel is a body of truth and of 
truths. These truths are the most profound; 
they concern the divine plan, purpose and 
method. They are as eternal as eternity, as 
broad as space, as complex as nature's forces. 
They bear relations to each other. Some of 
these truths are primary, some subordinate; 
some causes, some results. Some find their 

[S] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

chief support in the Bible, and their secondary 
in the human reason; some find their chief 
support in the human reason, and their 
secondary in the Holy Scriptures. Some are 
axiomatic, and others represent long processes 
of reasoning. Some are inductive, and some 
deductive. The Gospel, therefore, is a body 
of reason and truth. As such, it is specially 
committed to the reasoning mind. I am not 
saying that the Gospel is not a gift, a message 
that the wayfaring man may understand and 
accept. But I am saying that the Gospel is, 
in certain relations, a philosophy, and that the 
Gospel as a philosophy is specially committed 
to the college graduate. For he is the man of 
reason. His is the mind, if any mind may be 
said to be broad, which is comprehensive. It 
brings together the widely distributed parts of 
knowledge and unites them into a consistent 
principle. His is the mind, if any mind can 
at all appreciate, which is able to assess each 
fact at a proper value, to put the subordinate 
as subordinate and the primary as primary. 
His is the mind, if any mind be at all able, 
which is able to see clearly, to reason logically, 
to infer correctly. His is the mind, if any 
mind be at all qualified, which is to detect the 
sophistical, to unravel the complex, to recog- 

[6] 



TRUSTEES FOR HUMANITY 

nize its own limitations, to distinguish the 
essential from the arbitrary, to point out the 
way of truth. 

In this age there is special need of inter- 
preting the gospel as truth. In this age there 
is special need of receiving the gospel as a 
message addressed to the reason as well as to 
the heart, as a declaration made through the 
reason to the conscience and to the will. The 
gospel is, on one side, in peril of becoming 
what I may call a manual training. In this 
condition the impulse for service is in danger 
of becoming as irrational as it is enthusiastic 
and well-intentioned. The gospel of service 
is of course good, glorious. Be ye doers of the 
word, and not hearers only. But if such a 
gospel of service have only heart, it is a gos- 
pel dissipating, disintegrating. It is like the 
steamer having boiler and engines, but rudder- 
less; it is destructive to itself and to others. 
On the other side the gospel is in peril of again 
becoming a form of mysticism. In mysticism 
the will loses itself in the contemplation of the 
eternal and the infinite. Modern mysticism 
takes on the name known as Christian Science. 
Mysticism has its place, Christian Science has 
its place. It is a half-truth, or a quarter- 
truth. But if mysticism be not founded on 

[7] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

reason — and the peril is that mysticism will 
not be founded on reason — its place is small 
in the world of thought and reality. It be- 
comes a cloud, which, even if filled by the 
glories of unseen suns, is only an object of 
aesthetic and ascetic delight, coming no one 
knows whence, leading no one knows whither. 
The body of truth and of truths which are 
presented in the gospel are neither primarily a 
workshop nor a cloudy palace. But they do 
represent a temple of worship, of revelation, 
and of reason. In such a temple the college 
graduate is the most fitting dweller. 

The gospel, too. represents a person, as well 
as a truth. As such, therefore, the college 
graduate becomes a special trustee of it. The 
first chapter of Genesis and the first chapter 
of John's gospel bear the same revelation — 
" In the beginning God created the heaven and 
the earth. . . . And God said, Let there be 
light: and there was light.'' " In the be- 
ginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
God, and the Word was God. ... In him was 
life; and the life was the light of men." I 
care not what name is given to Him whom we 
call God. You may call him Jehovah, the 
Eternal, the First Cause, the Word, the Spirit. 
I am not preaching a sermon on the trinity. 



TRUSTEES FOR HUMANITY 

But by whatever name He is called, He is 
behind all, in all, through all, a person. 

For the presentation and representation of 
such a person, unworthy as the presentation 
may be, the worthy person is essential and 
necessary. Personality alone represents per- 
sonality. What, therefore, let me ask, is the 
college for — but for the training of large 
personality? A personality in which are em- 
bodied at once the verities and the graces, 
the disciplines and the enrichments, the 
sanctities and the duties of life. Yet how de- 
fective is the result, how imperfect the realiza- 
tion of the ideal. At times, how low the ideal 
itself! But, above all other conditions, does 
not the college represent the most potent force 
and the richest condition for making character 
reasonable, moral, and strong? Does it not, 
above every other force, unite the contradic- 
tories, giving purity without Pharisaism, lofti- 
ness of aim without unreasoning ambition, 
compassion without softness, beauty free from 
self-consciousness, and the manhood which 
creates manliness and the womanhood which 
creates womanliness? Such a character, so 
disciplined and enriched, is the best qualified to 
interpret, to declare the Supreme Person of the 
universe to the world. Humanity, as it is seen 

[9] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

and set forth by the college, is best fitted to 
express divinity to men. 

In the administration of this trusteeship of 
the gospel by college people, the gospel is to 
be applied to several great conditions of our 
life in America. 

One of these conditions to which the trustee- 
ship of the gospel is to be applied is the subject 
known as labor and capital. This condition 
is most serious. Two elements necessary for 
the producing of results of primary value to the 
community are in constant or periodic antag- 
onism. If they are not warring foes they are, 
on their very best terms, armed neutrals. 
Capital is inclined to estimate labor as more 
important than the laborer. Methods are of 
slight worth provided results are satisfactory. 
Capital at times seems to give ground for the 
judgment that nothing is so cheap as human 
hands, and no supply so certain, or so large, as 
human life. 

On the other hand the laborer is inclined to 
be jealous of the capitalist. He feels that 
labor is not getting its full increment of the 
increasing forces of civilization. He feels 
himself often opposed, cajoled, played with, 
fooled. He easily becomes an anarchist. He 
sees law-breaking at the top, and he at the 
[101 



TRUSTEES FOR HUMANITY 

bottom defies the law. Sullen, gloomy, re- 
vengeful, he often is. The Labor Union he 
uses as a mighty engine of democracy, both 
against the capitalist and his brother work- 
man. He often uses it as a means of serving 
one through all, and also of serving many 
through one. The Union is at once a democ- 
racy and a monarchy, — a monarchical de- 
mocracy and a democratic monarchy. It is 
the most important tool of modern industry 
and of modern life. 

The first element in the adjustment of the 
rights and duties of capital and labor is the 
understanding of the rights and duties of both 
capital and labor. Each has rights, each has 
duties. Each is inclined to see and to insist 
upon its rights, and each is inclined to be 
blind to, or to shirk, its duties. Each side 
is, on the whole, narrow. Its narrowness 
arises from what it esteems its duty of self- 
preservation. A board of directors declares, 
" We must protect this property, we are the 
trustees of our stockholders; we must earn 
dividends; if we do- not protect and earn, 
suffering results. " The statement is true. 
A labor union or council declares, " This work 
is worth more than is paid for it; if we fail 
to get proper pay, we shall strike! " Each 

fill 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

statement is true, the logic logical. The 
capitalist and laborer are both right, and both 
wrong, in many matters, in most strained 
conditions. But each is inclined to be per- 
sonal in his interpretations, partisan in his 
conception of duties, narrow in his ideas of 
rights. 

In this condition the chief purpose, the only 
method to be pursued is the making of both 
the laborer and the capitalist larger men. 
The method to be pursued is the method of 
education; it is the method of altruism. It is 
the method of putting oneself in the other 
man's place. It is the method of altruism, 
the method of helping the other man to get 
into one's own place. We shall reach no per- 
manent method of settlement of the labor 
question until we have helped all men into a 
thinking broader, larger, into a feeling more 
vital, into a sympathy more tender and 
appreciative. 

For securing such a result the college grad- 
uate stands as a most helpful force. What 
does education mean unless it means breadth? 
What does education mean unless it means a 
mighty sense of appreciation? For what are 
the favorite emblems on the shields of our 
colleges? Are they not a rising sun, a lighted 
[12] 



TRUSTEES FOR HUMANITY 

lamp? What are the favorite words embossed 
on these shields? Are they not "Veritas," 
" Lux " ? Light for all, light for each; breadth 
for all, breadth for each! Prejudice, partiality, 
partisanship are not to be suffered. 

It is not for me, now and here, to set forth 
the special methods by which you shall show 
your breadth. Of course you are not to stand 
before the world and say, " I am broad-minded; 
I am called to settle the disputes of labor 
and capital! " You are not to be a strike- 
breaker or a boycott-adjuster. You are to 
go about your business. But in going about 
your business you will have ample opportunity 
for using your largeness. The by-products of 
your breadth may be worth more than its 
direct results. You are, above all people of 
the community, to have that largeness of 
mind, that bigness of heart, which will do more 
than all else to settle immediate, present and 
local difficulties. You are to give to all men 
that same largeness and bigness which, when 
they have become a part of humanity, will 
render labor difficulties impossible. 

To a second question in our American life 

are you college people to apply the trusteeship 

of the gospel. The labor question touches all 

parts of the land, all orders of society. The 

[ 13 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

second question to which I refer is immediately 
a problem of the South. It is the question of 
the civil, social, industrial condition of the 
colored race. This government is a republic. 
It is a republic based upon equality of personal 
rights. I suppose that no one denies that in 
certain states laws are passed which do result 
in the denial of civil rights. I suppose also 
it is recognized that the industrial field for the 
colored man is, on the whole, becoming more 
confined. I suppose in many parts the feeling 
is in favor of a restriction of the social privileges 
of the colored race. The whole condition is 
unique in the history of the world. A race, as 
a race, inferior in power, of ten millions, domi- 
ciled in a republic of sixty other millions, — 
it is a problem of tremendous proportions, 
complex in historic relations and elements, 
fraught with endless, some would say frightful, 
responsibilities. But such a problem is a 
problem, first of all, for the reason. First of 
all it is a problem to be analyzed, each element 
drawn out fully, each element related to every 
other element. The problem is first to be 
stated in terms of the reason; it is to be dis- 
cussed in terms of the reason; it is to be solved 
in terms of the reason. One of the most 
forbidding elements in , the whole problem is 
[14 1 



TRUSTEES FOR HUMANITY 

that some people are found who are either 
unable or unwilling to state, or to discuss, or 
to treat, or to try to solve, the problem in terms 
of the reason. Therefore, because this ques- 
tion is a question for the reason, it is a question 
making a special appeal to college folk. Its 
historic relations, its racial condition, its civil 
and civic elements, its industrial and social 
affiliations, form a question which summons 
the largest knowledge, the profoundest re- 
flection, the keenest insight, and the most 
accurate discrimination. 

Of course, in the solution of this problem 
the heart of love has its place, and the con- 
science of justice has also its place. If the 
heart of love or the conscience of justice fail 
to secure their rights in its solution, then the 
problem becomes yet more difficult, difficult 
as it is. But if this force cannot be relied upon 
for the solution, the greater is the duty placed 
upon the reason for the proper interpretation 
and declaration of the question. The proper 
interpretation and declaration of any great 
human problem is the best method for arous- 
ing the conscience to righteousness and the 
heart to its duty of love. In such a move- 
ment, therefore, primarily a movement of and 
through the reason for the betterment of a 
[IS] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

race, the college man and woman of the well- 
trained reason must have a great and significant 
part. You are put into a trusteeship of the 
gospel for the benefit of men and of any race 
of men. 

A third problem of our time to which should 
be applied the trusteeship of the gospel by- 
college folk, is the general problem of the giving 
to civilization increasing depth and larger 
relationships. For we sadly know that our 
horizons of vision are not broad, nor our wells 
of strength and of refreshment deep. Too 
keenly we know that the walls of the temple of 
our civilization are pretty thin. Every mob 
breaking down doors of jails, shooting, burn- 
ing wretches who still are human, proves 
how thin is the crust which divides subter- 
ranean fires from our homes and our lives. 
Soldiers of some civilized nations put into 
China become ravenous beasts. John Morley, 
writing of the social and personal evils attend- 
ing the discussion of the Irish Bill of 1868, 
says, " It was a painful demonstration how 
thin, after all, is our social veneer even when 
most highly polished." I sometimes fear that 
forces now active may fling themselves on the 
community and again overthrow civilization, 
as it was overthrown in southern Europe 
[16 1 



TRUSTEES FOR HUMANITY 

fifteen hundred years ago. Neither this 
nation, nor any other of the advancing 
peoples of the world, has any patent right 
to a constant progress or to a lasting exis- 
tence. 

In the enriching and deepening of the forces 
of modern civilization, two questions arise for 
special notice. One question is the decline 
of the respect paid to the formal government 
and to the chosen members of it, and the 
corresponding increase to the informal associa- 
tions of society. The law-making body of the 
nation, of the state, of the town, stands for less 
than it did a generation ago. Congress, 
Legislature and City Council receive less 
respect today than they received in the days 
of Garfield, of Sherman, of Sumner and of 
Dawes. The laws and statutes are less ob- 
served, and are more thoroughly regarded as 
not worthy of observance. The respect paid 
to the executive and judicial part of the 
Commonwealth may not have suffered serious 
decrease, but the respect paid to the law- 
making body has vastly diminished. Man has 
become more, the state less; the people have 
waxed, the nation waned. But with this 
decline has occurred an increase in the force 
of the associations of men which are not politi- 
[17 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

cal or governmental. The advancing forces 
are industrial, financial, commercial. The 
Stock Exchange is a more powerful force than 
the Senate Chamber. The Board of Directors 
of certain corporations have become more in- 
fluential than the President's Cabinet. The 
captains of industry are more commanding 
leaders than Governors of Commonwealths. 
Some would say that the captains of industry 
are the governors of Commonwealths, and 
some would say that at times those most in- 
terested in the Stock Exchange do sit in the 
seats of Congress. The influence of certain 
men over the destiny of this nation, who have 
no office and no desire for office, approaches in 
power, some might say exceeds in power, the 
influence of the President for the United States. 
I have sometimes thought that a great cor- 
poration is well named the UNITED STATES 
Steel Corporation. Such a figure is not to be 
interpreted too closely, but my simple conten- 
tion is that the respect paid to the formal 
government and governors has weakened, and 
the respect paid to the informal government 
and governors has strengthened. 

A second change is passing over the com- 
munity. Human interest is passing from 
theology to sociology. Its center is no longer 
[ 18 1 



TRUSTEES FOR HUMANITY 

divinity, but humanity. The process is the 
reverse of the Ptolemaic and Copernican 
transfer. We find our center, not in an out- 
side world, but in man. We celebrate Christ- 
mas, God becoming man — the incarnation, 
rather than Easter, man becoming the divine. 
The incarnation of God in man is more im- 
portant than the spiritualizing of man in God. 
The great poems are no longer attempts to 
justify the ways of God to man, but they do 
attempt to justify the ways of man to man. 
We build few cathedrals for worship, we build 
auditoriums for instruction, social and college 
settlements, Young Men's and Young Wo- 
men's Christian Associations, Lend-a-Hand 
Clubs, Endeavor Societies, Leagues for Social 
Service, these and many other forms of al- 
truism embody the present tendency. The 
divine element in religion is minimized, the 
human magnified. I am neither opposing nor 
approving such a movement, I am only trying 
to interpret it. The change is one of the 
most significant and fundamental of all the 
changes of our generation. 

These two movements, the movement away 

from the formal government to the informal, 

from the divine element in religion to the 

human, are illustrations of that great move- 

[19] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

ment of human society which one of the 
greatest of social philosophers has described as 
a movement from status to contract. The 
formal government and religion represent the 
status into which one is born, a condition ap- 
proaching in permanence the forces of nature. 
We are passing over into the life in which 
forces are to be arranged and covenants to be 
made. Life in government and in religion 
has become mobile. Every day alters con- 
ditions, every day offers new duties, every 
hour reveals new truth and new work. Each 
new condition leads to new arrangements of 
the social order and organism, and all new 
arrangements lead to new conditions. 

In such changing circumstances and forms 
the college graduate has laid upon himself 
peculiar duties. For the graduate has an 
intellectual sense of relationships, he sees and 
he foresees. He is to be at once just and 
generous, large-minded and large-hearted, con- 
siderate and enthusiastic. He is to adjust 
and to readjust, in the changing conditions 
of his universe, the stabilities and the standards 
of the formal government, and to represent 
the vital and energetic forces of life. He is to 
seek to show that law lies at the base of every 
state, political, civil, social and industrial. 

r 201 



TRUSTEES FOR HUMANITY 

He is not to forget that all social movements 
relate themselves to Him in whom we live and 
move and have our being. He is to have 
cognizance of the great tides of human affairs, 
and also to take note of the individual waves 
which rise, break, fall. He is to seek to make 
social progress religious, religious interpreta- 
tions human, humane, humanistic. He is, by 
his greatness and fineness, to make civiliza- 
tion great and fine. 



To the Members of the Classes about to 
Graduate: 

Into your hands I put great commissions. 
I summon you to serious duties. You are to 
live in the most critical of centuries, among the 
most formative of peoples. In great move- 
ments you are to share, in great undertakings 
you are to have a part. The conditions are to 
demand your strongest might, your largest 
endeavor, your keenest wisdom, your most 
persistent patience, your finest enthusiasms. 
But my confidence in you is also large. Obli- 
gations never exceed abilities. If you do 
all that you are able to do, the result is 
well. That you will do all that you are 
able to do, I believe. Go forth, then, to 
[211 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

transmute learning into wisdom, strength 
into efficiency, power into service. Go forth, 
then, 

" To be forever an influence, 
A memory, a goal, a high example, 
A thought of honor in some noble heart, 
Part of thy country's treasure and renown, — 
And oft give courage unto souls that strive." 



22 



II 

ENTERING INTO LIFE 



Chapter II 

ENTERING INTO LIFE 

[1905] 

"If thou wilt enter into life, keep the command- 
ments." — Matthew xix : 17. 

THESE words form one of the most 
comprehensive of Christ's remarks. 
The sentence represents the constitu- 
tion of man. If you would live, observe the 
Commandments. The ten? Yes, the ten. 
What are the Commandments of which the 
keeping will give life? What is the compre- 
hensive interpretation of the Ten Command- 
ments ? 

The first commandment refers to what I 
may call idealism. Idealism is a god-likeness 
which is supreme, of which no image can be 
graven. Idealism is conscientiousness touched 
by imagination. I refer to those intellectual 
ideas and to those ethical principles which are 
supreme and fundamental. I mean the belief 
in, and the living for, what the outer eye sees 
not, what the outer ear hears not, but the 
belief in, and the living for, what the inner eye, 
[25] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

the inner ear, do perceive and appreciate. I 
have in mind the intimations of the eternal, 
of the immortal, which Wordsworth sets forth 
in the great Ode. Conscientiousness may be 
slow, painful, plodding. Imaginativeness may 
be airy, visionary, unattainable. But idealism 
as a working commandment unites slow, pain- 
ful, plodding conscientiousness with airy, 
visionary, and unattainable imaginativeness. 
It lifts conscientiousness into a moral force, — 
swift, noble, and inspiring. Conscience re- 
strains, regulates, articulates the imagination. 
The imagination gives to the conscience wings, 
and conscience gives to the imagination feet. 
The man of idealism is a man of ideals, but 
he is more. He lives in a certain atmosphere; 
he holds a certain attitude; he occupies a cer- 
tain angle of vision; he is moved by certain 
higher purposes. But he has a range of pur- 
poses which are joined together by great table- 
lands of common sense. He has a reverence for 
tradition, for tradition represents idealism seen 
from the side of achievement. The idealism of 
tomorrow becomes the history of yesterday. 
Sincerity clothes this man of idealism as with 
a garment, for he cannot live a lie in himself. 
Simple is he, for he sees great things and sees 
them in great relations. In noble self-control 
[26] 



ENTERING INTO LIFE 

he lives, for he is a part of the universe which is 
subject to law. Resignation and aggressive- 
ness are in him united. He is a patriot, for his 
country is dear, but he is also human. He loves 
men more than he loves man. He is an opti- 
mist; he knows he is in God's world and that all 
must be well. He is not a man of ambition, 
for ambition is self-centered. He is a man of 
aspiration, for aspiration points toward the 
goal. He is a man free, for he believes in him- 
self. He is a man tolerant, for he believes in 
other men. Justice, love for the beautiful, 
temperance, loyalty, are in him, for he believes 
in God and in all that God has made. In him 
are united not a few contradictories, — initia- 
tive and self-restraint, laboriousness and rest- 
fulness, concentration and versatility, co- 
operation and individualism, considerateness 
and self-respect, liberty and law, gravity and 
gayety, intensity and breadth, grasp on essen- 
tials and faithfulness to details, the cardinal 
virtues and the cardinal graces. All these are 
in him joined. 

You are going forth into a world vastly 
material and materialistic. The lights of the 
street will be nearer to you than the stars. To 
make a living will at times seem to you more 
important than to make a life. Career may 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

be a goal more attractive than character. 
The present may seem longer than the ever 
coming and never coming future. The market 
may tend to transmute you into merchandise. 
Gross and sordid purposes will flaunt them- 
selves before you. Trivial and perilous schemes 
will attract. Queen Victoria said to an arch- 
bishop: "As I get older I cannot understand 
the world; I cannot comprehend its little- 
nesses." But these littlenesses will at times 
seem to you not little. You are, however, to 
see them in the light of great principles. In the 
comparison of eternal and infinite truths, you 
are to be what John Morley says Gladstone 
was: " Immersed in active responsibility for 
momentous secular things, he never lost the 
breath of what was to him a diviner aether. 
Habitually he strove for the lofty uplands 
where political and moral ideas meet. He 
struck all who came into contact with him by a 
goodness and elevation that matched the 
activity and power of his mind. His political 
career might seem doubtful, but there was no 
doubt about the man." 

Emerson asks, in the essay on The Trans- 
cendentalism "Where are the old Idealists?" 
Where are they who represented genius, virtue, 
the invisible and heavenly world? Some have 
[28 1 



ENTERING INTO LIFE 

gone, but others are here. They have not 
been taken in early ripeness to the gods. 
High purposes are still held. The unseen is 
still seen. The temporal still has relations 
with the eternal. Our frivolity and base 
examples shall not dim the lustre of the shining 
of the stars. Vulgarity shall be ashamed in 
the presence of dignity, and low aims shall 
bury themselves beneath the sod of forgetful- 
ness. 

Such idealism is essential Christianity. No 
small share of the power of Christianity is 
drawn from its idealism. Christianity gives 
a God. Idealism in its very being demands a 
God. Christianity presents the highest stand- 
ard of duty and of grace. Idealism seeks and 
accepts the noblest aims. Christianity offers 
the mightiest force in doing duty, — love. 
Idealism is quickened by the finest affections. 
Christianity gives a sense of proportion of 
values. Idealism sees things in relations. 
Christianity interprets life as more than living, 
the body as more than raiment, the soul as 
more than the body, eternity as more than 
time, the laws of being as more than the 
methods of exchange: all this is idealistic. 
Christianity is idealism. The most perfect 
working type of idealism is found in Chris- 
[29] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

tianity. The record of Christianity is a record 
of the triumphs of idealism. 

A second commandment leading to life is 
the commandment to work. " Six days shalt 
thou labor." The parenthesis of the fourth 
commandment is important, as well as the 
main text. The first commandment of Eden 
is reinforced at Sinai, and it becomes the 
message of the teacher of Nazareth and of the 
Apostle of Tarsus. The command to do is a 
command addressed, of course, to the will. 
But to the college people it is a command 
having special relation to the brain. The work 
which you are to do is to be a work in which 
you can use your intellect. Into every work, 
of course, some mental force enters. But the 
greater the opportunity for the use of intellect 
in every service, — other elements being the 
same, — the more worthy of you is that 
service. 

It is significant that of the first five hundred 
and thirty-one graduates of our oldest college 
in its first sixty-five years, about one-half 
became clergymen. It is also significant that 
for many years in the last century, more 
graduates of certain colleges entered the law 
than entered any other calling. It has now 
become most significant that a larger number 
[30 1 



ENTERING INTO LIFE 

of graduates are entering business. The pro- 
fessions are usually called learned. Business 
is not usually called learned. But those who 
are to enter business are to make business a 
learned calling. Small is the outlook for you 
in any work unless you can make that work 
intellectual. The increase in the horse-power 
of the world in the last fifty, twenty, and ten 
years has been tremendous. The increase in 
the brain power has not been so tremendous. 
Any place in which you can use your brain, 
your whole brain, your brain at its highest co- 
efficient of power, you should feel free to 
accept. The perception of a fact, the co- 
ordination of facts, the conclusion of facts, 
the weighing of evidence, judgment, these 
represent forces which every worthy calling 
should accept from you. If, for the use of 
such forces, a calling has no primary need, it 
is no calling for you to accept. If, for the use of 
such forces, a calling does have primary need, 
it may worthily represent the field of your 
choice. I recall that Henry Adams says that 
Clarence King had a poor opinion of intellect. 
He found it a defective instrument, but he 
admitted it was all that man had to live upon, 
although he confessed that women had other 
power also. 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

In the last fifty years, the earning of each 
inhabitant of this country has almost doubled. 
In the year 1850, each person earned, 
on the average, each day, thirty cents; 
in 1880, 44 5/10 cents; in 1890, 51 44/100 
cents; in 1900,58 12/100 cents. This increase 
is due both to the enlarged efficiency of 
material forces and to the enlarged efficiency 
of the human brain. The enlarged efficiency 
of material forces is, of course, the resultant of 
the action of the brain and the human will. 
This increase is the application of the com- 
mandment of Eden and of Sinai, — " Six days 
shalt thou labor." 

Of such work, demanding intellect, you are 
to be the master. Work is in peril of making 
the worker like the well-digger, the further he 
digs the lower he falls and the narrower be- 
comes his outlook or uplook. Work should 
make the worker like the wall-builder, — the 
further he builds, the broader his vision, the 
larger his relations. You are to be the master. 
Work enslaves some men. No slave-driver's 
whip was ever more imperative than is the 
compulsion of the duties of some men's work. 
You are to be the master intellectually. You 
are to see, understand, appreciate. You are 
to know your work; you are to know your- 
[32] 



ENTERING INTO LIFE 

self; you are to know your work in relation 
to yourself and yourself in relation to your 
work. You are to be the master morally. 
The temptations of your work you are to 
understand in their nature and constitution, to 
feel in their attractivenesses and repulsion. 
You are to be master of your work in your 
will. You are to be able to lay it down as well 
as to take it up. The mastery required for 
laying down a work is sometimes more magnifi- 
cent than mastery required for taking up and 
carrying forward a great work. 

The greatness of the President of the Uni- 
versity of Chicago has been seen for more 
than a decade in wisdom of planning and 
energy of doing. So great an educational 
result of a decade the world has never known. 
The conditions were, and are, unique. The 
material forces have also been unique. The re- 
sult has, furthermore, been unique. But, the 
greatness of the man himself, the President, 
William Rainey Harper, has been proved quite 
as much by the calmness, fearlessness, and 
willingness to close the door of this greatest 
opportunity. If God calls you to lay down a 
work of riches and the highest promise, you 
will show yourself a masterful hero quite as 
much in letting fall the task as in being willing 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

to carry it forward to glorious completion and 
consummation. 

For those who are masters of great work, for 
those who have brains to put into great work, 
the calling is loud and insistent. The demand 
for common folk must be great, because there 
are so many of us. But the demand for un- 
common folk is as much more insistent as it 
is narrower. Men of force and of vision, men 
of faithfulness and of courtesy, men of bold- 
ness and of self-restraint, men who are teachers 
and doers, men of guidance and of inspiration, 
men of such character and power as you college 
folk represent, for such the world calls mightily. 

I would not say to you what Pasteur said 
to the students of Edinburgh on the occasion 
of its three hundredth anniversary: "Work 
perseveringly; work can be made into a 
pleasure, and alone is profitable to man, to 
his city, to his country." But I would say to 
you, choose a work demanding your highest 
and best intellect, and of such a work make 
yourself a great master. 

In aiding graduates to become masters of 
work, the colleges are setting, with each passing 
year, a worthier example and a stronger in- 
spiration. Those who are founding and en- 
dowing colleges are inclined to apply the 
[34 1 



ENTERING INTO LIFE 

standard of efficiency with increasing thorough- 
ness. The three men who are doing the most 
to equip colleges are applying the test of effi- 
ciency. Dr. Pearsons, Mr. Carnegie and Mr. 
Rockefeller are constantly examining colleges 
for the purpose of learning the relationship 
between their product and their expenditure. 
Of course a share of the academic product it is 
impossible to test by ordinary standards. 
The product has a value in quality as well as 
in quantity. But the test of amount of product 
has value. One of the gentlemen said to me 
recently, speaking of a college which he had 
been asked to aid, " That college has property 
amounting to one and a quarter millions of 
dollars and one hundred and eighty students." 
It was a college historic, numbering among its 
graduates the greatest names. " But," he 
declared, by inference, " the result is not 
commensurate with the expenditure." This 
College of which you are becoming graduates, 
and every college, should impress each student 
through the economic efficiency and the 
efficient economy of the use of equipment and 
of endowment. 

A third commandment written upon the 
posts of the doorway of life may be called the 
commandment of love. The last six of the 
[35 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

commandments of the twentieth of Exodus 
are easily interpreted as commandments of 
love. For what is " Honor father and mother " 
but an expression of love? What is the pro- 
hibition against committing adultery but 
respect for love, love high and pure? What 
is the prohibition against stealing, false wit- 
nessing, and coveting, but respect for prop- 
erty, for truth, for rights? What, in fact, 
is the twentieth of Exodus but an analysis of 
another command of the sixth of Deuter- 
onomy? "And thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thine heart, and with all thy 
soul, and with all thy might." 

The command to love, as a means of entering 
into life, has special application in every age. 
In this age, it has, I think, three or four applica- 
tions of peculiar significance. 

One application of love in our time is to be 
made to that industrial and commercial method 
known as competition. Competition is called 
the life of trade. It often proves to be the 
death of trade. For competition may result in 
monopoly. Monopoly is monarchy writ large. 
Monarchy may crush. The central question 
is, — How far forth should competition be 
guided by the principle of love? The central 
answer to be made at once is, competition is 
[36] 



ENTERING INTO LIFE 

to be guided absolutely by the principle of 
love. For the principle of love is higher than 
the method of competition. The principle of 
love in trade is to be applied at once to one's 
neighbor and to oneself. The command 
that you are to love your neighbor as yourself 
implies that you are to love yourself as you 
love your neighbor. Your love for yourself 
is to be adjusted to your love for your neighbor, 
and your love for your neighbor is to be ad- 
justed to your love for yourself. These two 
principles are to be fitted to each other under 
the purpose of the betterment of the com- 
munity. Competition may survive or compe- 
tition may fall, but it is either to survive or to 
fall under the law of the fitting relation of 
egoistic and altruistic love. 

This principle of love is also to be applied 
to a second part of the human field. It be- 
longs rightfully to the domain of capital and 
labor. One of the saddest impressions of our 
time relates to the indifference of some men 
who are employers concerning those whom 
they employ. Its sadness is exceeded only 
by the sadness arising out of the jealousy 
and hatred of some employees against some 
employers. The strike, the lock-out, is an 
industrial affair, it is said, but each easily 
137 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

becomes a personal affair. When either be- 
comes a personal affair, it easily becomes also 
essential murder. 

The community may assent to the belief that 
there should be absolute liberty in all industrial 
affairs in respect to making contracts. The 
community may recognize that both labor and 
capital have the right to organize, each for its 
own good, provided the public good be not 
thereby impaired. The community may be 
apprehensive that the closed shop represents a 
certain fixedness of principle and of industrial 
condition which is distasteful to the American 
mind. The community may fear that the 
closed shop may take away certain motives 
and incentives to industrial and personal 
benefit. But, above all else, the community 
recognizes that man is man before he is a 
laborer, and that, in the treatment given to 
him as a laborer, the element of the man is 
superior and supreme. The community recog- 
nized that in this human part, sympathy, 
respect, fellowship, love, are first, fundamental, 
ultimate, supreme. 

A third application of the commandment of 

love is to be made to the common relationship 

of nations. Love has touched the individual 

and humanized him. Can love touch the 

[38 1 



ENTERING INTO LIFE 

nation and civilize it? Love has abolished in 
America the duel. Seventy years ago, students 
fought duels and killed each other. Can love 
disarm nations? Respect for person and for 
property has created and established courts of 
law in a single state. Can a similar respect 
maintain, as it has established, permanent 
courts of arbitration? Although England is 
always fighting somewhere, yet with a civilized 
power, with the single exception of the Crimean, 
England has not had a war for almost one 
hundred years. In the century preceding her 
sword was seldom in its sheath. But love is 
not only to abolish war; it is also to disarm 
the nations. To disarm the nations is to trans- 
mute poverty into competency, and com- 
petency into wealth. It is to transform con- 
sumers into producers, destroyers into creators. 
The army and the navy threaten to make 
every great power of the old world bankrupt. 
Love would give wealth, as well as peace. 
Love also lessens a certain touchiness found 
among the nations. States are like capital, — 
sensitive. They are easily provoked. To 
jealousy they seem naturally subject. Each 
eyes the other with suspicion. Each fears that 
others are plotting against its welfare. Ig- 
norance begets fear; fear, anger; anger, self- 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

defence; self-defence, conflict. But love en- 
genders confidence; confidence, frankness; 
frankness, sympathy; sympathy, co-operation; 
and co-operation, union and unity. Love 
would oblige nations to heed the command- 
ment, " Thou shalt not kill," and would prevent 
nations from coveting provinces on the Rhine 
and territory in Manchuria. Love is the con- 
stitution of every peace society. 

Love is also to be applied to, and in, the 
personal relation. John Hay, writing of a 
friend, said: " I once introduced him to an 
eminent writer, who remarked, ' I understand 
now the secret of his charm. It is his kind- 
ness. ' " Jealousies, envies, bickerings, are to 
be made to cease. Men are to care for and 
bless each other. Let no one ever come to you 
without finding a friend. Let no one ever 
depart from you without leaving a helper. 
Happiness is born in love. Forbearance, in- 
spiration, guidance, are its results. College 
folk, above all others, are to be great lovers of 
their kind. 

Idealism, work, love! These three words 
sum up the ten commandments of Exodus. 
These three words represent the command- 
ments, of which living means life. In whom 
are these great commandments united and 

r 40 1 



ENTERING INTO LIFE 

incarnated? In whom, other than in him who 
spoke them? Did ever idealism have a higher 
aspiration? Was conscientiousness ever more 
noble or more deeply touched by lofty imagi- 
nation? Are not his beatitudes the creed of the 
idealist? Are not the Kingdom of Heaven, 
the vision of God, and the childhood in God, 
the life richest and finest? Was he not poor 
in spirit, pure in heart, and did he not come as 
the Prince of Peace? Was not the Christ the 
great worker? Did he not say, "My Father 
worketh hitherto, and I work"? Were there 
not joined in him the three most laborious 
callings of the carpenter, the teacher, and the 
physician? Was not his last command, " Go, 
and do"? Moreover, was not he the great 
lover of all history ? Were not his first recorded 
acts, acts of obedience? And among his last, 
were there not found the prayer of forgiveness? 
Are not the arms of his cross raised in bene- 
diction and beneficence, and were not his last 
words, words of benediction and peace? The 
Christ was the idealist, the worker, the lover. 

To the Members of the Graduating Classes: 

If thou wouldst enter into life, keep the 
Commandments. To the one to whom these 
words were spoken, life meant the richest 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

character. If he were to become the best 
man, he was to keep the Commandments of 
God. These words are still as true as on that 
day in which they were first spoken. If you 
are to become the best that lieth in you, you 
are to keep the Commandments. You are to 
keep them, not because they are command- 
ments, but you are to keep them because the 
Commandments represent truth, law, principle. 
But the words may be interpreted in a sense 
narrow and special. You are entering into 
what is called life. This week for you ends 
pupilage, dependence, learning, training, educa- 
tion. For pupilage, self-direction; for learning, 
activity; for training, service; for education, 
achievement is to be substituted. The prepa- 
ration is made, the ship is built, the day of 
launching has dawned. In this life, you are 
yet to be under the Commandments. Ideal- 
ism; it is to be to you at once an atmosphere 
and a mountain peak. In it you are to breathe; 
for it, you are to aspire. Work; it is to be 
your happy habit, — unceasing, progressive, 
remunerative, inspiring, recreative. Love; it 
is to be your life. Thus shall character grow 
from more to more. 



42 



Ill 

SYMPATHY THE SOLUTION OF 
THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 



Chapter III 

SYMPATHY THE SOLUTION OF THE 
SOCIAL PROBLEM 

[1906] 

" And it came to pass, that, as Jesus sat at meat in his 
house, many publicans and sinners sat also together with 
Jesus and his disciples: for there were many, and they 
followed him." — Mark ii : 15. 

THE text is a picture of democracy. The 
democracy of Christ springs from the 
sympathy of Christ. The association 
of Christ with men has its origin in his innate 
respect for men. Sympathy is primary. Sym- 
pathy represents thinking with, feeling with, 
choosing with, suffering with, rejoicing with, 
others. Sympathy is appreciation. It is the 
adoption of the other's point of view. It is 
the putting oneself in the other's place. 
Sympathy is an incarnation of the other per- 
son in oneself. It is the transfer of interest. 
It is vicariousness. Sympathy is your life 
lived in, and for, me; it is my life lived in, 
and for, you. It is the appeal of the race to 
the individual to surrender his individual 
F45 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

interests for the sake of the race. It is the 
appeal of the individual for deliverance from 
the small and the trivial, and for deliverance 
into the great movements and achievements 
of the race. 

An illustration of the broad relation of sym- 
pathy lies in the field which is itself made up of 
large human concerns, — namely, literature. 
Literature is more or less great as it appeals to 
the greater or smaller interests of men. Great 
literature is great because it appeals to great 
interests. Pick out the poems or the essays 
which are held to be the dearest and the noblest, 
and it will be found that they make the 
strongest appeal to the largest numbers. Mr. 
Lowell's greatest ode commemorates the college 
men who died on the field of honor at their 
country's call. Wordsworth's greatest ode 
sings the intimations of the life immortal. 
Tennyson's greatest poem is a chant of life 
and of death, and of life becoming the final 
conqueror. The greatest works of the greatest 
novelist of our country are concerned with the 
central theme of the dominance of conscience. 
The sin, the sorrow, the atonement, of Arthur 
Dimmesdale are only single notes in the 
greatest human Miserere. The novel attains 
its unique place in human life by reason of the 
[461 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 

responsiveness which its note of love quick- 
ens in every soul. Literature touches things 
fundamental, elemental, universal, eternal. 
It therefore is literature. Human sympathy is 
likewise to embrace the things that are deepest, 
highest, most lasting, in human character. 

The principle, then, which I wish to explain 
is the principle of sympathy. This principle 
I do not wish so much to explain as I wish 
to apply it. I wish to apply it in the solving 
of the social problem. 

For, what is the social problem? It is the 
problem of society. It is the problem " How 
can human beings live together in peace and 
efficiency? " It is the problem of humanizing 
life. Society was of the farm; the farm stood 
for isolation. Society is of the factory; the 
factory stands for consolidation. Agriculture 
is separation; industrialism, combination. The 
problems of the farm-time were political. The 
present problems are social. Reflecting in 
the late evening of his long day of life, Glad- 
stone, speaking of his work as a law-maker, and 
referring only to achieved results, noted these 
achievements: " (First) The Tariffs, 1842- 
1860; (Second) Oxford University Act; (Third) 
Post Office Savings Banks; (Fourth) Irish 
Church Disestablishment; (Fifth) Irish Land 

247] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

Acts; (Sixth) Franchise Act." What are these 
results? Are they not largely social? They 
have to do with men living together in happi- 
ness and service. 

The social question is tremendously im- 
portant. In it lie the germs of revolutions. 
A man living in one of the most beautiful of 
all homes said to me, " The social revolution 
is sure to come. It was near coming in 1896." 
A young merchant just out of college said to 
me, " The revolution is sure to come. Current 
discussions and movements make plain it will 
be here within a decade." Writing in the 
year 1835, Tocqueville said: "The good 
things and the evils of life are more equally 
distributed in the world: great wealth tends 
to disappear, the number of small fortunes to 
increase; desires and gratifications are multi- 
plied, but extraordinary prosperity and irre- 
mediable penury are alike unknown. The 
sentiment of ambition is universal, but the 
scope of ambition is seldom vast. Each 
individual stands apart in solitary weakness; 
but society at large is active, provident, and 
powerful: the performances of private persons 
are insignificant, those of the state immense." 

Three score of years and ten have wrought 
great changes. Have the good things and the 
[48 1 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 

evils of life become more equally distributed? 
Has great wealth disappeared? Is ex- 
traordinary prosperity or irremediable pen- 
ury still unknown? Is the scope of ambition 
still seldom vast? Does the individual stand 
forth and apart in solitary weakness? Is it 
not true, rather, as Canon Barnett has said: 
" On one side are the classes in possession, who 
rejoice in their refinements and restraints, 
in the cleanliness of their persons and the 
order of their meals, in their knowledge and 
culture. On the other side are the working 
classes, who rejoice in their strength, make 
merry over the mincing ways of their neigh- 
bors, and grow angry over what seems to be 
their hypocrisy and selfishness." 

The problem is, therefore, the social problem 
to aid men to live together in happiness and 
in efficiency, in peace and in service. What 
will aid men unto such humanizing living? 

Be it said negatively, the problem is not to 
be solved by any attempt at equality in work, — 
material, intellectual, ethical. Inequalities do 
exist, and apparently must exist. Men are 
born equal, not in ability or environment, 
but they are born equal simply in having cer- 
tain legal rights. The second term of the 
French Triad is false, as the other two are true. 
[49 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

Liberty is the best condition; fraternity is a 
very precious result; equality, in any other 
sense than a legal sense, is impossible. 

Nor can the problem be solved by largesses or 
by relief funds. The history of poor relief for 
two thousand years proves that the ordinary 
methods of municipal and personal help, of 
dealing with poverty, create or make more 
difficult the problem which they are designed 
to solve. 

Nor can a solution be found in what is known 
as the Closed Shop, or the Closed Association 
of Employers. These propositions are more 
or less true: 1st, that there is a presumption 
in favor of absolute liberty of contract and of 
personal conduct; 2d, the community recog- 
nizes the rights of both labor and capital to 
organize each for its own good provided the 
public good be not thereby impaired; 3d, the 
community acknowledges that hygienic and 
other important conditions may often be best 
obtained for the whole body of workmen by 
the whole body rather than by the individual; 
4th, the community is apprehensive that the 
Closed Shop represents a certain fixedness of 
principle and industrial condition which is 
distasteful to the American mind; 5th, the 
community holds that each man should be 
[50 1 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 

treated in his relationship of employment 
primarily as an individual; 6th, the community 
has a distinct fear that the Closed Shop may 
result in taking away certain motives and 
incentives to industrial and personal benefit; 
7th, the people firmly believe that a change so 
fundamental in the industrial and personal 
order as is embodied in the Closed Shop should 
be made, not by one party nor arbitrarily, but 
should be made after thoughtful debate and 
by the whole body concerned. These propo- 
sitions may be more or less true, but they do 
not represent the force or the wisdom necessary 
for solving the problem. 

The method which seems to me of the high- 
est worth in the solution of the social problem 
is sympathy. 

For, first, sympathy represents respect for 
men as men. It pictures men as having God 
for their common Father, and the human 
brotherhood as their common environment. 
Sympathy has a keen sense of values. It treats 
the accidental and the incidental as the ac- 
cidental and the incidental. It finds the 
image of God in every child. It regards the 
individual as an individual, but also regards 
the individual as existing in, and for, the race. 
It respects the race as the race, but also 
[511 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

knows that the race exists for the individual. 
It declares that the differences which divide 
men are slight in comparison with the like- 
nesses which unite them. The lowest man 
and the highest are much more alike than 
are the highest brute and the lowest man. 
Men are divided largely by exterior goods or 
evils. Men are united by the great principles 
of justice, of temperance, of tolerance, of in- 
tegrity and sincerity, of self-control and self- 
reverence, of imagination and industry, of 
liberty and humanity, of life and of death, 
of sorrow and of peace. These are the great 
things. Every home has its cradle; every 
house, its casket. The mystery of life and 
the mystery of death alike brood over all. 
Sorrow and joy knock at every door. Sym- 
pathy commands respect for men as men. 
Sympathy commanding respect for men as 
men does not so much solve the social problem 
as it dissolves it. Its hard and rugged lines 
are melted by the warm smiles or the hot tears 
of tender sympathy. 

In the respect of man for man is included 
what may be called the element of neighbor- 
liness. One regrets that the neighborhood is 
passing away. People are seldom neighbors 
now, People living near each other do not 
[52 1 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 

unite because they live near each other. 
It would help this common respect of man 
for man if the neighborhood could be restored. 
Peter Harvey tells a story of Daniel Webster 
that, in the year 1817, Mr. Webster was 
called to defend two men who were accused 
of highway robbery. The appeal came to him 
at a time when he was tired out by service in 
Congress and in the courts. He had arranged 
to go away from his home. He felt no fee 
could tempt him to do further work. Three 
men from New Hampshire were announced. 
They asked him to defend the accused. The 
evidence for guilt was strong, but the feeling 
was that the men were innocent, being the 
subjects of a conspiracy. One of the three 
delegates said : " Here are two New Hampshire 
men who are believed in Exeter and Newbury, 
and Newburyport and Salem, to be rascals; 
but we in Newmarket believe, in spite of all 
evidence against them, that they are the vic- 
tims of some conspiracy. We think you are 
the man to unravel it, though it seems a good 
deal tangled even to us. Still we suppose that 
men whom we know to have been honest all 
their lives can't have become such desperate 
rogues all of a sudden." " But I cannot take 
the case," persisted Mr. Webster; " I am 
[53 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

worn to death with over- work; I have not 
had any real sleep for forty-eight hours. Be- 
sides, I know nothing of the case." " It's 
hard, I can see," continued the leader of the 
delegation; " but you're a New Hampshire 
man, and the neighbors thought that you 
would not allow two innocent New Hampshire 
men, however humble they may be in their 
circumstances, to suifer for lack of your skill in 
exposing the wiles of this scoundrel Goodridge. 
The neighbors all desire you to take the 
case." 

That phrase " neighbors " caused Mr. Web- 
ster to take the case. The " neighbors " 
wanted it; the "neighbors" thought he would 
do it; the "neighbors"! It brought back to 
the mind and heart of Daniel Webster the 
community of association, of poverty, of sick- 
ness, of small economies, of distresses of many 
sorts, of boyhood and of manhood, of birth 
and of death. " Oh," said Mr. Webster, " if 
the neighbors think I can be of service, of 
course I must go." If to the American city 
there could be restored the neighbor and the 
neighborhood, respect for man as man would 
be heightened and a common sympathy vastly 
increased. 

Second: Sympathy leads not only to a re* 
[54 1 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 

gard for men as men and to emphasis on 
fundamental human conditions; sympathy also 
leads to love. There is intellectual sympa- 
thy, — appreciation. There is emotional sym- 
pathy, — fellow feeling. There is also voli- 
tional sympathy, which I call love. To love 
men is the only panacea. Jeremy Bentham 
said: " If you would gain mankind, the best 
way is to appear to love them, and the best 
way of appearing to love them is to love 
them in reality." " Life in its largeness," says 
Woodberry in his great Essay on Swinburne, 
" is the power to love." The value of love for 
men is today beset by two perils. One peril 
is the love of things. People love material 
goods; they love wealth; they love money. 
The love of lucre represents, concentrates, the 
love for things. How silly is this love! The 
pathos of Mr. Dombey's interpretation of 
money to his poor little Paul makes the silli- 
ness of this love deeply pathetic. The love for 
men as men is also hurt by the passion for 
processes, by the ambition for progress, by 
the desire to get on. The current American 
" will and way " of making one's own way 
results in the overthrow of the person who 
stands in the way. But these two loves, — 
for things and for processes, — are yet set 
[55 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

aside by a mightier love for men as men. To 
know men, to be with men, to serve men, 
means that one will and shall love men. Of 
the great historian, Green, Leslie Stephen says: 
" His sympathies with human beings were 
strengthened; and the history might have been 
written in a very different tone had the writer 
passed his days in academical seclusion. His 
interest in the welfare of the masses, and his 
conviction that due importance should be 
given to their social condition, determined a 
very important peculiarity of the work." 
Thus, being with men, understanding men's 
conditions, knowing their environments, one 
shall love men. 

It you thus love men, the social problem is 
solved, or, when the love has become dominant 
the social problem has largely vanished. 

Third: Sympathy is the method of the 
solving of the social problem. For sympathy 
leads one to the Christ as teacher and inspirer. 
One who is taught and moved by the Christ 
will possess great sympathy. For, the Christ 
represents the largest interpretation of human 
life. The industrial classes have largely fallen 
away from the Protestant churches, but they 
have not fallen away from the Christ. The 
son of the carpenter, and himself a carpenter, 
[56 1 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 

is their idol and their ideal. " Down with 
the churches," they may cry, but before the 
manger and the cross they stand in mute 
worship. 

Pilate's " Behold the man " is still inter- 
pretative. He is the consummate, compre- 
hensive character. He comes bearing the two 
widest and most important functions of teach- 
ing and of healing. He unites the contra- 
dictories of human experiences. He is holy, 
but he wishes to be baptized by his kinsmen. 
He is wise and strong, but he selects men to 
learn and to serve. He is transfigured on the 
mountain peak, but he descends to the valley 
to heal the poor sick boy. He is capable of 
mighty moral indignations, but he forgives the 
penitent and encourages the imperfect. He 
proclaims the gospel of the Kingdom, but he 
blesses the individual. He invites the weary 
to come to him for rest, and the heavy-laden 
for strength, and the ignorant for wisdom. 
He accepts the invitation of the rich, but he 
fails not to recognize the temptations of the 
rich. He declares the sorrowing are to be com- 
forted, the meek to have the earth, the poor in 
spirit Heaven's Kingdom, and the pure in 
heart the vision of God. His parables set 
forth great human lessons of growth, of efii- 

[57] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

ciency, of fellowship, of oneness of service. 
They ever intimate that " the heart of the 
Eternal is most wonderfully kind." To Him 
truth is at once a force and an aim; a duty, 
a condition and an ideal. His miracles are 
works of healing. Wonders are they to be- 
holders, but to him they are services. To heal, 
to soothe, to inspire, to help, is his purpose. 
He is righteous without self-conscious holiness, 
faithful to duty without pride, compassionate 
without softness or weakness, patient without 
slowness, earnest without haste, resisting 
temptation, — yet tender toward those who 
are* tempted. He was so human, yet he gave 
intimations of the special divine callings and 
relations. He declared he had powers on 
whom he might call for aid in crises, yet he 
died crucified. He raised the dead, yet he 
allowed himself to die. 

I speak not as a theologian: I speak as your 
friend, your fellow-worker. The Christ stands 
forth as the inspirer, the helper, the King of 
men. The man who lives as the Christ lived, 
who thinks as the Christ thought, who does 
as the Christ did, who is as the Christ was, — 
has, and must have, sympathy, which helps 
men to live together as brothers. I care not 
whether he be the Oriental Christ or the Christ 
[58 1 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 

of the Occident, whether he be the Christ of 
the Calvinist or of the Arminian, whether he be 
the Christ of the Middle Age or of the Twen- 
tieth Century, the spirit, the truth, the power 
of the Christ would, and does, solve the social 
problem. 

Therefore, sympathy moving out on the 
great pathways of regard for men as men, — 
sympathy going forth on the great wings of 
love, — and sympathy, incarnate in the man 
inspired and moved by Christ, — sympathy 
would answer the questionings which spring 
out of the great social conditions of our time. 
If you care for and love men, and if you care 
for and love men as the Christ cared for 
and loved them, there would be no social 
problem. 

To the Members of the Graduating Classes: 

You have come to the week of your gradua- 
tion. You are going forth; going forth from 
the College, going forth into the world. The 
world into which you go is a bundle of complex 
forces and of perplexing problems. The forces 
were never so forceful, never so complex; the 
problems never so perplexing. The problems 
concern society. They concern the relation 
of men to men. These problems you are to 
[59] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

understand. Your studies have fitted you to 
understand. These problems you are to ap- 
preciate; they are significant of humanity's 
well-being. Your studies have fitted you to 
see things as they are. These problems you 
are to aid in solving. Where should humanity 
look for aid in answer to its great questions if 
not to the schools which write " Light " and 
"Truth" upon their shields? You are to go 
forth as human beings, — great, strong, high 
in purpose, having passion yet free from rash- 
ness, of tireless patience, of undying determi- 
nation, to do your part toward making over 
the kingdoms of this earth into the Republic 
of God, which is the kingdom of perfected man. 
May the Christ of God, and the Jesus of 
man, help, bless, and keep you, every one. 



60] 



TV 

SOME REWARDS OF A COLLEGE 
TRAINING 



Chapter IV 

SOME REWARDS 
OF A COLLEGE TRAINING 

[1907] 

" Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man 
that getteth understanding, 

" For the merchandise of it is better than the mer- 
chandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold." — 
Proverbs iii: 13-14. 

YOUR college course is ended, its work is 
done, its result for better or for worse, 
assured. As you thus stand with the 
academic gate closing upon you, I want to 
point out some of the results which belong to 
you at the close of these four college years. 

Our text indicates that these results are of 
the utmost preciousness. The whole chapter 
whence are taken the verses of our text is a 
song of praise of the rewards of wisdom. To 
the significance of some of these rewards I 
wish to call your thought. 

The college years are the years of the form- 
ing of friendships. The conditions promote 
personal intimacies and relations. Hundreds 
[63] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

are living in the same atmosphere, doing the 
same work, moved by the same general aims. 
Likeness promotes likingness. College life, 
too, is very real. It is free from deceits and 
deceptions. It abominates sham, it puts down 
arrogance; it abhors undue self-consciousness, 
it promotes the element of reality, the base on 
which friendship can rest. The college age, 
too, is the age of friendship. It is the age 
when the emotionalism of youth is passing over 
into intellectual maturity. The youth has lost 
the softness of character in which friendship 
does not last. He has not come into the hard- 
ness and unresponsiveness of character in 
which friendship does not begin. In such a 
soil, in which character is receptive without 
callowness and strong without indifference, 
friendships blossom and blossom to fruitage. 
Absence from home, moreover, promotes the 
forming of friendships. The student is flung 
into new relations. He lives alone: he must 
relate himself to new friends, — a new social 
alignment is made. The result is that next to 
the loves of the home, are the affections of the 
academic altar. 

The greatest poem of the century is not only 
a poem great in its consolation, but also in its 
type of college friendship. Yet Tennyson had 
[641 



REWARDS OF COLLEGE TRAINING 

other friends than Hallam. He lived with 
Spedding, who wrote the best life of Bacon, 
with Milnes, who afterwards was Lord Hough- 
ton, with Trench, who became the Archbishop 
of Dublin, with Dean Alford, with Merivale, 
the historian, and with other men of the same 
great wealth of promise. To every Greek 
boy, Liddell and Scott's " Lexicon " is a Web- 
ster's Dictionary. The friendship of Liddell 
and Scott began while they were still under- 
graduates, and lasted for fifty years. One of 
the greatest editions of the New Testament 
ever issued is that of Westcott and Hort. 
The friendship of these two scholars began in 
their early life at Cambridge, and lasted as 
long as life lasted. And associated with West- 
cott, also, were Lightfoot, the great scholar, 
who became bishop, and Benson, who became 
archbishop. The biography of every college 
man contains records of college friendships. 
Such friendships you are carrying out into 
your lives. You have made friends more 
intimate and more lasting in these four years 
than you will ever make in all the rest of 
your life. These are the friends who call you 
by your first name, to whom you can pour out 
your soul without reserve, who, whether you 
succeed or fail, will always be true and with 
[65 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

whom you will always remember yourself in 
the freedom and joyfulness of youth. 

There is also another result you are bearing 
forth from the college and which might be 
called a friendship. I shall call it the friend- 
ship of books. Books have been your tools, 
your equipment. The book is the symbol of 
the college. I fear that many of the books 
which you have read have not seemed to you 
to be friends. But there are books, you should 
remember, which are or which may become 
friends. A book, like a friend, speaks to you, 
argues with you, inspires your thinking, 
quickens your heart, confirms or annuls your 
choice, enriches your soul. A book bears to 
you messages, tells you a story, sings you a 
song, breathes consolation, giving a garment of 
praise for the spirit of heaviness. The book is 
the best method for you to enter into friend- 
ships with the great souls of the race, and also 
with the great soul of the race itself. The 
book reveals the lasting inspirations. 

Americans are the newspaper-reading people 
of the world. The newspaper habit is at 
once good and bad. Good, for it represents 
a knowledge of the immediate, the present 
world. It is the world of today. It is well 
to know the world of today. Today and to- 
[66 1 



REWARDS OF COLLEGE TRAINING 

day's world is a part of the everlasting time 
and a part of the universe. But the news- 
paper habit is bad in that it does not promote 
a larger knowledge of today. It fails to recog- 
nize that today came out of yesterday and is 
going to pass into tomorrow. The newspaper 
is not comparative; it is descriptive. It is 
not interpretative. It becomes more of the 
reporter and less of the editor. It is not re- 
flective. The newspaper should become more 
and more a judgment day and less of a spec- 
tacle. 

Therefore, I commend to you the friendship 
of books. Three types of books do I wish in 
particular to commend. One type is the essay. 
The essay stands for the most artistic result of 
prose composition. The essay represents in 
the writer what the diamond represents among 
precious stones. It is a regular and permanent 
form of treasure. The prose masters are 
essayists. Macaulay, Carlyle, De Quincey, 
Emerson, Lowell — make these your friends. 
They are great companions. You can thus 
walk with the philosopher along the Concord 
streets, with the historian along the banks of 
the Thames, or with the interpreter, in quiet 
happiness, beneath the trees of Elmwood. 

Yet more friendly than the essay is the 
167 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

biography, for the biography is the man him- 
self. Ah, these precious stories of a life; 
precious because the life is precious. Thus one 
comes into conference and communion with 
the masters. These last years, too, have given 
these great interpreters: Bismarck and Glad- 
stone, Huxley and Herbert Spencer, Tennyson, 
Browning, Longfellow and the other Cambridge 
poets. These are great friendships, which are 
offered to you for your knowing, for your 
consolation and for your inspiration. 

But also in this form of friendship exists 
still another, the friendship of great poetry. 
The friendship of great poetry is dearest be- 
cause poetry is the best soul, giving its best, 
its clearest, highest and profoundest vision, 
its noblest, happiest art. It may be Words- 
worth whispering hopes of the deathless life; 
it may be Shelley or Keats, rare souls dwelling 
apart like the star; or it may be Browning, 
virile, humble, triumphant; or it may be 
Whittier, singing of the dear, simple New Eng- 
land life, or chanting some chant for a noble 
soul, as he did sing of the first President of this 
College. Whoever the poet may be, his poem 
offers to you a friendship, dearest, closest, 
best. 

So long as you have the friendships of great 
[68 1 



REWARDS OF COLLEGE TRAINING 

books, you cannot be alone. So long as you 
have your library you cannot be homeless, 
so long as you drink the life-blood of master 
spirits, so long you will live and be strong. 
Your soul may be dull to music, your eyes may 
never see the soaring towers of Cologne, you 
may never be one of the little company that 
sits in silence in the Dresden Gallery before 
the Sistine Madonna: such friendships may 
be denied to you, but richer friendships, 
holier, more constant, the friendship of the 
great books are yours. They are the friend- 
ships of the college. 

There is also a third result which you should 
bear away from these college halls with you. 
I shall call it a sense of proportion. It is the 
appreciation of what is worth while. It 
stands for the significance of the significant. 
It represents interpreting great things as great 
and small things as small. It is a sense of 
judgment which has become a part of your 
character. You have a desire to succeed. 
The desire is right. Success, you may say, 
lies in your being beloved, in your becoming 
rich, in your winning distinction in the field of 
public service. Success may lie in forms of 
results more or less material. I want you to 
know that for success you may pay a price too 
[69] 



\S 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

high. What you give for success may be 
worth more than success itself. In this great 
struggle for what we call success, the struggle 
never more intense than today, a struggle no- 
where more intense than in America, there 
are some conditions to which this sense of 
proportion should be especially applied. One 
of them is work and leisure. I might preach 
to you the gospel of work as does Carlyle and 
as the modern man preaches. It is a good 
gospel. It belongs to the first Chapter of 
Genesis; I might also preach to you the gospel 
of leisure, of a leisure that is appreciative by 
reason of work, and that aids one to appreciate 
work itself. 

Leisure without labor is idleness, work 
without leisure is drudgery. Either is bad. 
Work with leisure is contentment, self-ap- 
probation, usefulness; leisure with work is 
recreation, happiness, restfulness. Keep the 
proportion. 

The same sense of appreciation is also to 
be applied to wealth and competency. The 
struggle for wealth is not so much of a struggle 
for money as a struggle for power. Some one 
says of Disraeli that he did not care for wealth 
and for fame, but for power. The mere desire 
for accumulation has lessened. The miser 
[70] 



REWARDS OF COLLEGE TRAINING 

seems to have passed out of life both in fact 
and in fiction. But the community is becom- 
ing keenly alive to the monarchy of money. 
The community is blindly feeling its way to 
the deposing of this monarch, as it has debased 
the political and civil monarch. The struggle 
for wealth is a very costly struggle. It costs 
most men too much. It costs most men 
health, it costs most men friendships, it costs 
most men large appreciations, noble relation- 
ships and breadth of living. It costs most men 
home. I am not here to preach the gospel 
of poverty. Neither poverty nor wealth is 
desirable for most. The temptations of each 
condition are hard; which are the harder I 
know not. But I do preach the gospel of 
proportion. A competency which shall indeed 
be competent, enough that shall be enough, 
not too much, not too small, that represents the 
golden mean of Aristotle. The temperate 
zone, one half way between the arctic of 
limitation and the tropical of undue luxuriance, 
represents the proper sphere. 

Moreover, in a still broader relation, is the 
sense of proportion to be applied to what may 
be called the sphere of self-interest and of 
public occupation. You are yourself. To 
yourself you owe duties. These two sets of 
F71] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

duties are to be thoroughly and fairly ad- 
justed. If you live for yourself, you live for 
an object very unworthy! If you live for a 
community, neglecting yourself, the life thus 
lived is not a life which the community wants. 
You are to live for yourself, to make that self 
rich, strong, vigorous, great, and this self you 
are to give to the great common life of 
the people. Ah, for a life that is great 
in itself, and just as great out of itself; 
so great out of itself because it is so great in 
itself. 

This sense of proportion, of adjustment, of 
appreciation, of the worth while, is a most 
precious heritage given by the college to its 
sons and daughters. 

The fourth result, and the last that I shall 
name which the college should give, is the 
sense of the presence of God as a part of your 
life. I am not speaking as a theologian, I am 
speaking as an interpreter. It is impossible 
for a man not to be always praying, says 
Emerson. I assume that you believe in a 
God. I must infer that God is a different being 
for different men. The subjective power of 
knowing, of understanding God, differs. Each 
man, therefore, may be said to have his own 
God. You may call God by diverse names, 
[72] 



REWARDS OF COLLEGE TRAINING 

you may worship him in diverse ways, you may 
interpret him in diverse forms. To one he 
may be an Over-Soul, the great spirit above 
all and around all, as the firmament is above 
and around the earth. To one he may be the 
Unknown and Unknowable, but the one, also, 
whom we are ever seeking to know. To one he 
may be the infinite force, which enters into 
finite relations, but whose essence is still hidden 
from the eye and the heart of man. To one 
he may be absolute truth, whom man is to 
seek to know; to one the absolute person; to 
one, as to Leslie Stephen, the Divine Good- 
ness; to one the Father, the Son and the 
Holy Ghost whom one is to worship; one 
eternal life, moving in time and in the presence 
of men. But by whatever name he is called, 
under whatever form he is worshipped, that 
being is to be recognized as having relations to 
your being. His presence is to be interpreted 
as present to you. 

I seldom rise and conduct the service of 
prayers of the morning of a college day, in 
each of these four years, without reflecting on 
the diversity of beliefs and the variety of 
experiences to which I know I am to minister. 
Some before me are born in the historic faith 
known as the Roman Catholic, some are 
[73] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

adherents of the faith of the Old Testament; 
some are members of Protestant churches of 
various names; some are without ecclesiastical 
affiliations. I feel that as I thus conduct a 
service for all, my words should express or 
intimate beliefs in which all can unite. I, for 
one, believe more than I say, and believe, of 
course, all I say. I wish for each to assent to 
all that is said, knowing, of course, that each 
believes more or other than is said, and also 
knowing that this overplus of belief is not a 
common belief. The belief common to ail is 
the belief in a God, in a God who is personal, — 
in a God who loves men, — in a God who has 
made a revelation of himself, — in a God in 
whom we live, — who is our origin, — in a 
God in whom we move, — who is our strength, 
— in a God in whom we have our being, — who 
is our present and eternal destiny. The 
thought of such a God saves life from material- 
ism, the worship of such a God saves life from 
sordidness, the love of such a God saves life 
from selfishness, and the service of such a God 
saves life from its own annihilation. 

There died, in the first calendar month of 

this year, one who had for a generation been 

a teacher in this historic college. How dear 

Professor Potwin unites and illustrates what 

[74] 



REWARDS OF COLLEGE TRAINING 

I have been trying to say. He was a college 
man. College friendships formed more than 
fifty years ago he bore through his life. Within 
these last days, I have read a letter from one of 
his students, himself bearing a distinguished 
name, of respect and of affection for this dear 
teacher. He knew the friendship of great 
books. You, his students, remember how inti- 
mate he seemed with the masters. His sense 
of proportion was keen. His leisure and his 
work were joined together in fitting harmony. 
The forces of his life were both static and 
dynamic. His communion with his God was 
as constant as it was deep. Like Enoch, he 
walked with God and he was not, for God 
took him. 

May we not also find in that life, which has 
given name to the Christian faith, intimations 
of the presence of these greatest rewards? 
Christ's disciples became friends. The teacher 
and the master was, toward the close of his 
service, pleased to call all these pupils his 
friends and to regard himself as their great 
lover. The Christ also knew that book, the 
Old Testament, which unites the history, 
biography and poem as no other book does 
unite. The Christ also possessed the sense of 
appreciation. Life was to him more than 
[75] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

living, the body than raiment, the soul than 
the body. Above all, the Christ dwelt in the 
presence of his God, " I and my father are one." 
The Christ bore forth from boyhood into 
manhood and bore through life the great ele- 
ment of friendship, of truth, of appreciation 
and of the divine presence. 

To the Members of the Graduating Classes: 

Endowed you are by nature, let me say, 
above most. Endowed you are by the college. 
Richer tonight must seem this endowment 
than ever before. These friendships, as you 
stand side by side, make an appeal more 
tender, more loving, than they ever have made. 
The wealth of truth, the power of inspiration 
of the noblest books; — material gold is as 
iron as compared to this wealth. The appre- 
ciation of values, the sense of proportion; 
what guardianship therein lies against the 
cheap, the mean, the unworthy! What an 
inspiration therein is found to buy that which 
is indeed the bread of life! The sense of God, 
the constant presence of the divine, the dwelling 
in the eternal now, how full of rapture the 
privilege! Great, great, my sons and my 
daughters, is your inheritance; rich is your 
endowment, noble is your circumstance and 
[76] 



REWARDS OF COLLEGE TRAINING 

condition. Bow your heads, humble your 
hearts in gratitude; sing your hallelujah of 
thanksgiving, for the Lord has been good to 
you. 



77 



V 

THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN LIFE 

WHICH THE COLLEGE AND THE 

COLLEGE GRADUATE 

SHOULD FILL 



Chapter V 

THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN LIFE 
WHICH THE COLLEGE AND THE COL- 
LEGE GRADUATE SHOULD FILL 

[1908] 

" I am come that they might have life, and that they 
might have it more abundantly." — John x : 10. 

LIFE is life's supreme interest. With- 
out it nothing is possible; with it, all. 
American life is the supreme interest of 
America. That life is full, progressive, intense, 
ambitious, imperfect. One of its glories may 
be called its imperfections. For there is a 
" glory of the imperfect." 

What, therefore, are some of the needs of 
American society? What are some of these 
needs which the college and its graduates may 
fill? 

(1) The first need to which I wish to call 
your attention is the need of intellectual 
accuracy, moral honesty, and ethical sincerity. 
These words may be comprehended in one 
word, — truthfulness. Truthfulness is a spirit, 
a mood, an atmosphere, of the whole man, 
[81] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

Truth becomes truthfulness when it has passed 
through the laboratory of the heart and the 
will, and passed into the whole constitution. 
The intellect is in peril of not seeing. The 
intellect does not see because it does not look. 
It does not see because it is near-sighted and 
astigmatic. The intellect is in part blind, — 
an internal state. The intellect is in part 
blinded, — an outward condition. The out- 
side world gives it more light than it can 
absorb, or it fails to give it sufficient light. 
Even if the facts be seen accurately and re- 
ported as they are, the reasoning upon these 
facts may be illogical and the inferences un- 
sound. The word " about " as an adverb 
is significant. A thing is about true, about 
right. The need is of absolute truth — of 
absolute right. 

To the filling of this need the college graduate 
should make a special offering. The graduate 
is set to see things as they are; to see things 
in relation; to see things in proportion. The 
college graduate is trained to reason; to find 
sound premises; to rise through logical proc- 
esses from these premises to correct conclu- 
sions. He is trained to detect and to discard 
fallacies. He knows that the terms of rea- 
soning should be exact; that the middle term 
[82] 



THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN LIFE 

should be always distributed, and the con- 
clusion should contain no more and no less 
than the premises. His study of formal logic 
has helped him to rational processes. His 
study of the ancient classics has given him 
discrimination, judiciousness, judicialness. His 
study of mathematics has trained in him a 
sense of the certainty of absolute truth, as 
the study of all human sciences has given 
him a sense of the uncertainty of all truth 
which is not absolute. Economics has taught 
him the complexity of human phenomena, his- 
tory the vastness and variety of human expe- 
rience, and philosophy the mysteriousness of 
his own existence. Literature of every order 
and age has trained him into appreciations 
intellectual, aesthetic and ethical. 

The graduate who is thus trained, disciplined, 
instructed, enriched, should help to fill this 
need in American life of truthfulness. In 
himself he is an example of one who can see 
straight and think clear. His speech should be 
truthful because of straight seeing and clear 
thinking. His temper and temperament should 
be truthful because he has learned that all 
deception is outlawed, and inartistic. His 
moral nature as well as his intellectual declares 
that exaggeration breaks the law of proportion 
[83 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

and harmony, that all dissimulation is unjust 
and ungentlemanly, that all minimizing of the 
truth is a minimizing of himself both in cause 
and result. He has learned not only, as 
Emerson says, that the superlative weakens, 
but also that the superlative deceives. He has 
learned, too, that the positive is not only the 
strongest in will, but also the clearest in and 
to the intellect. Therefore, the American 
college graduate — the man of truth, and of 
truthfulness — helps to fill this need of the 
American community. 

(2) American life also stands in need of 
poise, of steadiness. It is easily moved. Its 
interests are quickly stirred. There is in it a 
good deal of solid and substantial English 
immobility. One sees such immobility in 
those parts where the English tradition most 
obtains. But also, American life is imbued 
with a keen sense of French mobility and 
excitement. I apprehend that this element of 
mobility and excitement has been derived in a 
large degree from our climate. Our climate 
has done more for us of evil and of good than 
we usually believe. It has given us energy, 
push, aggressiveness. But it has also given 
us restlessness, undue eagerness, vaulting am- 
bitiousness. It has transformed the old Eng- 
[84 1 



THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN LIFE 

land muscle into New England nerve, nerve 
has become nerves, and nerves nervousness. 

I do not believe that the college can change 
the American climate; but the college can 
enhance the good effects of this climate, and 
help to remedy the bad. The college graduate 
should give steadiness and poise, because of the 
steadiness and poise of his own character. 
For the graduate has been trained unto 
discrimination. He has been led to see what 
is important and what unimportant, what 
significant and what insignificant. He has 
learned to try to appreciate the great as great, 
the small as small, the abiding as abiding, and 
the transient as passing. When he sees the 
clouds moving he does not fear the heavens 
will vanish. Discrimination leads to an appre- 
ciation of relations. Discrimination and a 
sense of relations lead to confidence in the 
truth and in the eternal forces of being. The 
understanding of the laws of existence leads 
to a trust in these laws. Catastrophes and 
cataclysms do occur, but the sun rises at its 
appointed time and place each day, and the 
stars keep their tryst with the astronomer. 
Every summer brings growth and blossom, 
every autumn fruitage and harvest. The 
discriminations of the intellect give calmness 
[85] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

to the heart, and a sense of large relations 
strength to the will. Discrimination leads to 
appreciation, and appreciation seems to be an 
act or a mood in which every part of one's 
being has a share. This appreciation repre- 
sents a certain judicial quality in intellect 
which leads to a certain judicious element in 
character and conduct. 

The college graduate has also been trained 
in a sense of self-restraint. Self-restraint is a 
function of the will. It represents calmness 
when one is tempted to be impetuous; humility 
when one is tempted to be arrogant; reti- 
cence when the provocation is to speak. But 
self-restraint is more than a function' of the will. 
It stands for the simplicity, quietness and 
soberness of the gentleman. It is remote from 
bumptiousness, extravagance, and what in 
both metaphor and fact is called loudness. 
Such a quality the college trains. Every 
study enhances its value. The study of lan- 
guages trains it through the discrimination 
which they represent. Mathematics trains 
the quality by its lessons of absolute truth and 
man's consequent humility. The sciences also 
train it by their teachings of the breadth and 
diversity of natural phenomena and by the 
apparent limitations of man's knowledge. 
186 1 



THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN LIFE 

History trains this element by its examples of 
nations and of men, who have perished through 
the foolish expenditure of human forces. Liter- 
ature and economics also train it through the 
gentle humanizing influence of the one, and 
through the profound moral reflections upon 
the phenomena of the race of the other, subject. 
Philosophy, also, cannot fail to develop self- 
restraint through the search for truth of man. 
Self-restraint, however, is never to become 
atrophy, or self-negation. It represents re- 
pression at one point, in order to gain force in 
another. It is the dam built to give greater 
power to the pent-up stream. It is the 
jumper going back in order to leap a longer 
length. This man of self-restraint is the man 
of poise and of steadiness. 

The college, therefore, training men of dis- 
crimination and of self-restraint, helps to fill 
a great need of this exciting and excitable life 
of ours. 

(3) American life is also in need of the inde- 
pendence of the individual. There should be 
a new declaration of independence, — it is the 
independence of the single man. This need 
of independence is largely industrial and com- 
mercial. The peril is that the independence 
of the individual will become lost. This in- 
[87] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

dependence is the result of a long and hard 
struggle. In it is heard the conflict of Greece 
against the East, in which Greece won, and 
which struggle helped in its triumph to create 
modern civilization. In it are felt the throbbing 
passions of the first Christian centuries, in 
which new and unknown forces of the North 
met and mingled with the old and new forces 
of the Empire in the valleys of Italy, on the 
plains of Spain, and on the banks of the Danube 
and the Rhine. In it is still recognized the ver- 
dict of the Protestant Reformation of the 
responsibilities and rights of the individual, 
before his God and before his brethren. Into 
it, too, and more closely, are wrought the con- 
clusions of the Puritan movement of three 
hundred years ago. I cannot believe that 
this doctrine of the independence of the 
individual the American world is easily to 
surrender. But the peril is on. It is the 
peril industrial, commercial. On the one side 
the labor union, on the other the so-called 
trust: the labor union demanding, I shall 
not sell my labor at less than a certain price; 
the trust requiring, I shall not sell my products 
below a certain value; the labor union demand- 
ing of me not to labor on penalty of forfeiture 
of my social freedom; the trust ordering me to 



THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN LIFE 

sell my property or making it impossible for 
me to buy my materials or to transport my 
products; the labor union in some cases 
apparently putting a price upon my head ; the 
trust apparently in some cases killing my 
business. Such is the difference between the 
upper millstone of the combination of capital, 
and the lower millstone of the combination of 
labor. The ordinary man, non-union, who 
wishes to work, or the merchant who wishes to 
use his money if he have any, or to get some 
if he have none, is in peril of being ground to 
pieces. 

Let us not deny the value of industrial and 
social groups. Let us acknowledge that one 
has the right to give up his rights. Let us 
confess that it may be a duty to surrender 
rights. Let us affirm that individuals are 
more important than the individual. Let us 
allow that the world's work can no longer be 
done by single individuals. That work has be- 
come so tremendous, so long continued in plan 
and performance, so widespread, so complex, 
so costly. But though acknowledging all 
this, let it also be declared that the industrial 
freedom of the individual should be preserved, 
his rights granted, his duties respected. Let 
us demand that the single man shall, in the 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

game of industrial competition, have the cards 
dealt out in fairness, that his playing shall not 
be interfered with, and that the rules of the 
game shall be obeyed. 

To such a complex and perplexing condition 
the college graduate may worthily give him- 
self. He has been trained as an individual. 
The most individual intellectual training 
given the world is given in the American college. 
The graduate has lived in a college, in a col- 
lection of men, in a community. But he has 
also lived as an individual. He has been 
respected as an individual. He comes forth 
from the college gates upon his own feet as an 
individual. The better the training he has 
received the more individual he is. Therefore, 
he is fitted to represent the independence of 
the individual, and to conserve those forces in 
American life which make for independence. 

But while one thus declares for the inde- 
pendence of the individual, there is also a need 
of American life which appeals to the graduate, 
— it is the need of great human feelings and 
relationships. As civilization becomes older 
it becomes more complex. As it becomes more 
complex it becomes more diversified, more 
stratified, more classified. American civiliza- 
tion gaining in age, gaining in complexity, is 
[90 1 



THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN LIFE 

also increasing in its spirit of caste. Against 
any spirit of caste the college graduate should 
be set as solidly as a Chinese wall, and as firm 
as Gibraltar's rock. In both his humor and 
his wit he must see the silliness of the petty 
divisions which separate. He can at once 
laugh over them, and also swear at them. 
History has taught him that our little societies 
have their day, — have their day and cease 
to be. But also, his theology and his philoso- 
phy have taught him that these societies are 
but broken lights of God, and that God is 
more than they. His study of the social 
sciences has made plain that society is one, 
and that each part depends upon every other. 
He may, or he may not, be humanistic, but 
let him be at least humane. Even he may 
not be humane — though I cannot think he 
should not be, — but at least he should be 
human. The humanistic studies and the 
humane strivings and conduct have served to 
broaden, deepen, and lift humanity. 

The college man is trained unto humanness 
by reason of comprehensive intellectual vision 
and understanding. The educated man knows 
that truth is not a straight line of two sides; 
it is a polygon, — it is a circle, — it has an 
infinite number of sides. College trains a 
[911 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

man to the largest vision and understanding 
of which he is capable. The association of 
fellows with each other is one source of such 
training. Men of diverse origin, — geographic, 
domestic, pecuniary and social, — mingle. The 
angle of the vision of truth and of duty varies. 
What to one is true seems to another false; to 
one expedient, to another necessary; to one 
morally wrong, to another morally right. 
Associations, intimate and prolonged, with 
men of diverse origin, give to the student a 
comprehensiveness of intellectual understand- 
ing and outlook. Largeness of view is not to 
be bought by hazy indefiniteness of interpre- 
tation. If comprehensiveness be large in out- 
look, it is still to be clear in articulation. 
Certain studies specially promote such in- 
tellectual comprehensiveness. This is one of 
the superb results of the study of history. If 
history be interpreted as a record of events, 
the bare record disciplines intellectual breadth. 
If history be interpreted as a record of certain 
relations, causes, results, it trains the highest 
forces of mind. The man of comprehensive 
mind is the man who declines to accept his 
own judgment as the only judgment, or his own 
interpretation as the only interpretation. He 
knows there are other judgments and other 
[92 1 



THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN LIFE 

interpretations. These his moral impulse 
prompts him to learn. Such learning rep- 
resents intellectual comprehensiveness and 
breadth of understanding which do lead to 
the largest humanness. 

A friend tells me that in the year 1874 
Jowett, Master of Balliol, said to him that he 
had made a point of introducing all new men 
of Balliol to the older. Such introduction 
aided the older in helping the younger. And 
he regarded this custom as one of the causes 
of the great success of the men of Balliol. A 
Western Reserve man, in traveling, said to me 
that wherever he met a Reserve man he made 
a friend. Good, very good. But also, grad- 
uates, wherever you meet a human being, 
know that he belongs to you, that you belong 
to him; that you are of his set, and he of yours, 
because you both are human. Great men are 
great humans. Be great in your simple hu- 
manity! Help to keep American life human. 

(4) Furthermore, and in the fourth place, — 
our life in America is in need of a new baptism 
of idealism. This life of ours is a singular 
union of idealism and of materialism. What 
is materialism? What is idealism? Material- 
ism is the living in and for what the eye sees, 
the hands handle, the ear hears. It is the lust 
[93 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of 
physical being. It is living for the now, for 
the here. Materialism is living. What is 
idealism? Idealism is living in the unseen, 
for the unheard, for the unfelt. It is living 
for the eternal and the far-off. Idealism is 
life. Idealism is the idea made a goal of 
struggle and of perfection. There is much in 
American life which naturally promotes ma- 
terialism. America is a new land, and a new 
nation is the American. Things material make 
a forceful, and to many the most forceful, 
appeal in a new settlement. The soil must be 
planted, harvests reaped; the water must be 
harnessed, and mill wheels set. The trappers' 
trail must become a path, the path a road, the 
road an avenue. Houses must be built, homes, 
cities created; all the conditions for living 
provided. Picture this very spot a hundred 
years ago tonight. Forest and fields were 
spread out, where are now tens of thousands 
of homes. The pioneers' long, white-hooded, 
slow-moving wagon was winding its way along 
corduroy roads, where tonight speeds the 
electric car and carriage. Let us never de- 
preciate the absolute need of the construction 
of the materialities of any civilization. 

But let us also know that in any civilization 
[94 1 



THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN LIFE 

are more than materialities. The Pilgrims 
came to the sandy, low-lying coast of Plym- 
outh to make a living; but they also came 
moved by great ideals. Among the ideals 
which moved them, says their historian Brad- 
ford, was the hope of extending the Kingdom 
of God. Such a hope needs to be taken by the 
American people as an ideal. We need to 
think less of getting on, and more of getting 
up. We need to think, if not less of doing 
something for America, at least more of 
doing something for the world as the field 
of the divine reign. We need to live less for 
what the outer eye may see, and more for the 
vision of things unseen. We need to live less 
for what shall delight the sense, and more for 
what shall satisfy the sensibilities; less for the 
fancy, and more for the imagination; less for 
admiration, and more for reverence; less for 
the picturesque, more for the beautiful; less 
for the pretty, more for the sublime; less for the 
present, more for the " eternal now." 

In the promotion of such a life, in filling 
such a need in America, you graduates are to 
bear a large part. From both religion and 
science you have learned that the things seen 
are temporal, and the things unseen eternal. 
You have learned to find satisfaction in truth, 
[95 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

and not in treasure; in duty, not in dollars. 
You have learned that life's richest content- 
ments lie in service — in helpfulness; in being 
pure, in speaking true, in righting wrong, in 
following visions. " Don't get rich," wrote a 
college boy from his camp forty years ago and 
more, to his friend, a Boston boy. You have 
learned already that riches cannot represent 
life's best results. You, having faith in God, 
faith in your eternal self, faith in noble hu- 
manity, faith in truth, and faith in service, 
shall lift our new material and materialistic 
life into a high and higher idealism than Greece 
ever knew, and of which Palestine was at once 
fulfillment, potency, and promise. 

I am come that they might have life, and 
that they might have it more abundantly." 
Like a piece of music returns our text upon it- 
self. These needs of American life of which I 
have spoken are the needs which Christ's life 
and Christ's character fill. Christ calls Him- 
self the Truth. " I am the Way, the Truth." 
Christ declares Himself the giver of peace. 
" My peace I give unto you." Christ stands 
for self. " I," " I," " I,"— is the emphatic 
word in His utterance. Christ represents 
humanity. " Behold the man." Christ repre- 
sents life in its fullest and most idealistic state. 
[96 1 



THE NEEDS OF AMERICAN LIFE 

" I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw- 
all men unto me." 

To the Members of the Graduating Classes: 

Little more need I say to you, my dear 
friends and co-workers. By you, as well as 
for you, I wish the purposes of Christ's coming 
may be fully and finally fulfilled. May you 
have life, and may you have life more and most 
abundant. For such abundant life, America 
calls. America calls for your largest appre- 
ciation of truth. America calls for your 
calmness and poise. America calls for your 
noblest independence. America calls for a 
great human sense in you as well. America 
calls for a noble vision of the ideal. May 
these calls be met in your character, and in 
your service. Give to our country your best — 
your all. Give your best, and give your all, 
in the name of God, for the sake of universal 
brotherhood. 



[97 



VI 
BEING RICH WITHOUT RICHES 



Chapter VI 

BEING RICH WITHOUT RICHES 

[1909] 
" Poor, yet hath great riches." — Proverbs xiii : 7. 

THE nation is becoming keenly aware 
of the duty of the preservation of its 
natural resources. The President of 
the United States and the governors of in- 
dividual states call conventions to increase 
knowledge and to quicken enthusiasm in the 
great undertaking. Commissions are ap- 
pointed to devise methods and to execute 
measures. Apparently some of nature's prod- 
ucts cannot be restored by the ordinary opera- 
tion of ordinary forces. Harvest fields devas- 
tated for a season may be replanted and 
forests once cut may be regrown; but river-beds 
made low cannot usually be refilled, and mines 
of coal, of silver, or of gold once exhausted 
cannot be restocked. The loss is lasting. All 
these measures and methods for the preserva- 
tion of the forces of nature are good. 

Individuals, too, are engaged, and indi- 
viduals for endless generations have been en- 
[1011 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

gaged, in laying up material goods. The 
purpose of the amassing has been and still is to 
secure power, to find happiness in the gaining 
and in the having. Small fortunes are amassed 
for the inevitable " rainy day," and great 
fortunes are piled up which would protect not 
only for one rainy day, but also against a 
deluge of forty days and nights. Such con- 
servatism and thrift are in many respects 
worthy. 

I wish, at the beginning of the Commence- 
ment season, which crowns your college course, 
to intimate to you that you possess riches 
that are more comprehensive and more precious 
than those of forests and fields and mines, 
more common, more fundamental, and more 
worthy than wealth or wage. This wealth is a 
wealth made by all the forces which strengthen 
man's virtues, which give enlargement and 
enrichment to character, and which promote 
the incarnation of the grades into graciousness 
and which deepen men's satisfactions in the 
eternal principles of life and of being. The 
having of such wealth is one of the comprehen- 
sive results of a college education. 

I would interpret your thought respecting 
the wealth which you have in the natural world. 

Nature first awakens in the beholder wonder, 
[102 1 



BEING RICH WITHOUT RICHES 

wonder which in turn becomes the material 
for and mother of poetry, and, secondly, she 
quickens curiosity, which in turn becomes the 
inspiring force of science. Nature makes her 
appeal to the will, too, as a source and emblem 
of power. She addresses herself, moreover, 
to the aesthetic sense as the image and in- 
spirer of the beautiful. Under each part of 
this quartet of relations nature offers friendship. 
In poetry nature is interpreted as suffused 
with a vital spirit to which man may hold 
relation. In science nature shows her worth 
as the beneficiary of man. In her power 
nature is manifest as the origin of the forces 
making for human welfare, comfort and up- 
building. In beauty and its appeal to the eye 
and the general heart of man, nature presents 
great consolations and inspirations. In each 
of these relations nature has become a resource 
to you whence you have acquired strength 
for doing, for bearing and for the enrichment 
of character. 

Such an appreciation of nature is made evi- 
dent in the Hebrew Psalms, and also, to take 
a long leap, in the poetry of Wordsworth. 
But without the interpretation of poetry, 
man finds in nature herself, through a direct 
approach, holiest treasure. Nature belongs 
[103 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

both to time and to space. In space it is 
vision appealing to the eye, in time it is a sym- 
phony appealing to the ear. But through 
both eye and ear nature appeals to the reason, 
and to the reason as a revelation of truth, of 
law, and of wisdom. Nature gives herself to 
us as the beautiful and the sublime. At her 
altar each may serve as either a priest or a 
saint. " Before all else," says Russell of 
Matthew Arnold, " he was a worshipper of 
nature, watching all her changing aspects with 
a loverlike assiduity, and never happy in a 
long-continued separation from her." Such 
worship arises from, and in turn deepens, the 
sympathies with the love for, and the knowl- 
edge of, nature. Man should become natural- 
ized, and nature humanized. One of the 
greatest literary men of the last generation has 
well expressed the humanizing of nature, 
when he says: "The mountains speak to me 
in tones at once more tender and more awe- 
inspiring than that of any mortal teacher. 
The loftiest and sweetest strains of Milton 
and Wordsworth may be more articulate, but 
they do not lay so forcible a grasp upon my 
imagination." 

The second form of the riches which belong 
to you as a college graduate, is found in 
[1041 



BEING RICH WITHOUT RICHES 

literature. Literature has, in various lan- 
guages, formed a large share of your study. 
What wealth that word intimates! The biog- 
raphy, the novel, the poem, the history! 
What one man, what all men have been and 
have done, what the imagination creates of 
romance and of song! The book as a friend 
is a great resource. One might speak of a 
book as a source of knowledge. Let me 
interpret it as a source and resource of friend- 
ship. The friends of the novel, how many, 
how interesting, how intimate without famil- 
iarity they all are: Pickwick, the most 
popular man in all fiction, Arthur Pendennis, 
Henry Esmond, so human, and Jane Austen's 
quiet and simple men and women of the first 
decades of the last century. One who knows 
them all, with Scott's and George Eliot's and 
Hawthorne's creations, has come to possess 
much of affection's strength and a goodly 
fellowship of humanity. 

" Darwin was extremely fond of novels," 
says his son, " and I remember well the way 
in which he would anticipate the pleasure of 
having a novel read to him, as he lay down, 
or lighted his cigarette. He took a vivid in- 
terest in both plot and characters, and would 
on no account know beforehand how a story 
[105 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

finished; he considered looking at the end of a 
novel as a feminine vice. He could not enjoy 
any story with a tragical end; for this reason 
he did not keenly appreciate George Eliot's 
stories, though he often spoke warmly in praise 
of ' Silas Marner.' Walter Scott, Miss Austen, 
and Mrs. Gaskell were read and re-read till 
they could be read no more. He had two or 
three books in hand at the same time — a 
novel and perhaps a biography and a book of 
travels. He did not often read out-of-the-way 
or old standard books, but generally kept to 
the books of the day obtained from a circu- 
lating library/' 

Perhaps some one would say that a yet 
richer resource lies in the great poems. • I have 
a friend who would prefer of a morning the 
Iliad to any other piece, and another whose 
solace is found in the iEneid. Many happy 
evenings have I spent with this friend as he has 
read out to me the great hexameters of the 
Mantuan bard. But if one prefer to keep to 
his English verse, as most do, what strength 
lies in the trinity of messages of Tennyson, 
Browning, Matthew Arnold! 

Browning seems uncouth, crabbed, un- 
known, unknowable; Tennyson seems cold, 
remote, at times apathetic, but each is a wise 
[ 106 1 



BEIXG RICH WITHOUT RICHES 

interpreter of and a mighty minister to our 
age. Matthew Arnold may sing the song of 
cultured doubt but he also chants the great 
psalm of ultimate faith. Browning sings of 
supreme and all-conquering optimism, " God's 
in His heaven, all's well with the world." 
Tennyson sings of the great things in life, of 
character, of duty, of God. Leonard Huxley 
says of his father, " Shelley was too diffuse 
to be among his first favorites; but for his 
simple beauty, Keats; for that, and for the 
comprehension of the meaning of modern 
science, Tennyson; for strength and feeling, 
Browning as represented by his earlier poems. 
These were the favorites among the moderns. 
He knew his eighteenth-century classics, and 
he knew better his Milton and his Shakespeare, 
to whom he turned with ever-increasing satis- 
faction, as men do who have lived a full life." 
The one man of modern time who found 
books the richest resource, was one who him- 
self was a maker of books. On his way out 
to India in 1832, Macaulay, as he wrote to a 
friend, read much. He says, " My power of 
finding amusement without companions was 
pretty well tried on my voyage." He pro- 
ceeds to name some hundreds of books. The 
last scene his nephew and biographer paints: 
[107 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

" We found him in the library, seated in his 
easy chair, and dressed as usual; with his book 
on the table beside him, still open at the same 
page." 

This friendship of books is a rich mine to 
which the college gateway opens. 

The third form of wealth which the college 
has given you is the friendship of friends. 
George Eliot says, that if a few weeks passed 
without receiving some message from a friend, 
she began to doubt that friend's love, so 
dependent was she upon her friendships. 
You first make friends, and then your friends 
make you. Friendships are based on personal 
likings and permanent principles. Friendships 
arise from and enter into the soul. Friendships 
are largely made when the heart is young, 
unfettered, responsive to give and to accept. 
Of noble friendships life is full. Carlyle gave 
to Tennyson his tobacco box as a pledge of 
eternal brotherhood, and in the bottom of the 
box was found a letter from Carlyle, intro- 
ducing Mrs. Oliphant. The friendship be- 
tween Tennyson and Browning is a noble 
example. Browning dedicated a selection of 
his poems to Alfred Tennyson: 

" In poetry illustrious and consummate, 
In friendship noble and sincere." 

[108] 



BEING RICH WITHOUT RICHES 

The son and biographer adds, " Browning 
frequently dined with us* The tete-a-tete 
conversations between him and my father on 
every imaginable topic, when no one but my- 
self was with them, were the best talks I have 
ever heard, so full of repartee, quip, epigram, 
anecdote, depth and wisdom; but it is quite 
impossible to reproduce them, owing to their 
very brilliancy. These brother-poets were 
two of the most widely-read men of the time, 
absolutely without a touch of jealousy, and 
revelling as it were in each other's power." 

Perhaps the most impressive illustration of 
a large number of warm friends is found in 
the career of Charles Wordsworth, the Bishop 
of St. Andrews. He tells that during his day 
at Oxford he was intimate with Claughton, 
who afterwards became Bishop of Colombo, 
with Roundell Palmer, with Anthony Grant, 
Canon of Rochester, with Dean Liddell, with 
Canon Harrison, of Canterbury, with Scott, 
the master of Balliol, with Vaughan, who 
became Professor of Modern History, with 
James Bruce, known as Lord Elgin, who be- 
came Governor-General of India. 

The dependence of friend on friend, the 
helpfulness of friend to friend, the formative 
power of friend over friend represent the 
[109 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

active side of the resource of friendship. 
Thomas Jefferson said of one of his college 
teachers that he " probably fixed the outlines 
of my life." Mark Hopkins helped many a 
Williams man to find himself. Arthur Hallam, 
moving upon Tennyson, Sir William Hamilton 
upon Clark Maxwell, Hawkins and Whately 
on Newman, Arnold on Stanley, Henshaw on 
Darwin, and Darwin on Romanes, how the 
list lengthens of noble mind inspiring noble 
mind in the conditions of intimate friendship! 
Many a younger man may sing of his friends as 
Romanes sang of Darwin, in his " Charles 
Darwin ": 

" My help, my guide, my stay of heart and mind, 
The friend whose life was dearer than my own." 

To commend the worth of friendship is to 
commend what all recognize as of chief worth. 
In the centuries that divide the writing of 
Cicero's essay " De Amicitia," from the 
writing of Tennyson's " In Memoriam," friend- 
ships are the unfailing springs of refreshment 
along life's thirsty highways. 

The college, furthermore, has opened to you 
a great resource in yourself." This resource is 
not the resource of pride, of arrogance, of self- 
satisfaction, of self-contentment. It is, first, 
[110] 



BEING RICH WITHOUT RICHES 

the resource rather of great thoughts and great 
thinking. " Give me a great thought that I 
may lift myself with it," said Jean Paul. 
Yes, a great thought lifts. " If you have a 
mind, use it; it is a most interesting thing," 
said Walter Bagehot. Great thoughts are 
a great resource. Such a resource the ablest 
of American theologians found in his contem- 
plation of God. In somewhat of hyperbolic 
phrase, he says that he liked to think upon the 
wisdom, the purity, the love, the excellency of 
the Divine Being as manifest in the sun, sky, 
cloud, grass, flower, trees, and all nature. He 
heard the voice of God in the thunder; he saw 
the face of God in the cloud; he felt the presence 
of God in his sweet contemplations. 

The resource of oneself is found not simply 
in the realm of thought. It abides also in the 
domain of feeling. Noble emotions constitute 
it and help to give it form as well as substance. 
" The heart has its reasons," says Pascal, 
" of which the reason knows not." These 
passions, either active or passive, represent 
conditions of sweet and noble contentment. 
Most people live more in their hearts than in 
their heads. Their feelings mean more to 
them than their thoughts. The optimist is 
quite as much the man who feels happy as the 
[ 1111 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

man who thinks straight; the pessimist is 
rather the man who " feels miserable " than the 
man who believes in evil. The heart, there- 
fore, the spring of holy and happy feelings, 
strong, pure, constant, is a noble element in 
the treasury of one's own selfhood. 

Into the possession of such a resource the 
individual usually enters through some great 
experience or by means of prolonged and up- 
lifting disciplines. In " Sartor Resartus " 
Carlyle paints this transformation as the 
passing from " the everlasting no " through 
" the center of indifference " into " the everlast- 
ing yea ": 

" Divine moment, when over the tempest- 
tost Soul, as once over the wild-weltering 
Chaos, it is spoken: Let there be Light! 
Ever to the greatest that has felt such a 
moment, it is miraculous and God-Announcing; 
even as, under simpler features, to the simplest 
and least. The mad primeval discord is 
hushed; the rudely-jumbled silent rock-foun- 
dations are built beneath; and the skyey 
vault with its everlasting Luminaries above: 
instead of a dark wasteful Chaos, we have a 
blooming, fertile, heaven-encompassed world." 
This change, however, is not a change in the 
world. The primary change is in the man 
[112 1 



BEING RICH WITHOUT RICHES 

himself, and the man himself clothes the world 
with the transformations which he himself 
experiences. 

This awakened man has come to believe in 
himself. He is egoistic in the most worthy 
sense, and possibly at times in a sense not the 
worthiest. This self-confidence arises in the 
man discovering in himself powers of which he 
had no intimation as existing. He finds 
himself stronger, larger, richer than he thought. 
The man thinks himself able to know things 
which once seemed impossible. " Produce, 
produce " is again commanded, as it was 
commanded by " The Everlasting Yea." He 
will do things. " Impossible " is not the word 
writ in this new man's dictionary. Whatever 
field of investigation or endeavor he may honor 
by the dedication of his powers will thence- 
forth be wider in extent and richer in findings. 
The man of this self-confidence is not inclined 
to sympathize with the past. The former 
generations have not done what they ought. 
Their richest attainments and highest achieve- 
ments are not absolutely either high or rich. 
Even iconoclastic may become the prevailing 
mode and agent of this new-born, self-found 
man. He may remove the images which hu- 
manity has long worshipped. The super- 
[113 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

stitions which humanity has been long con- 
tent to adore he expels from the ancient 
shrines and sets up new gods for humanity's 
worship. 

This self-confidence is usually very serious. 
It takes itself religiously. It has none of the 
gaiety and frivolity of the world. If a man has 
been devoting himself to keeping his purple very 
purple, his fine linen very fine, and has been 
wont to fare sumptuously every day, he 
becomes willing to discard his old belongings. 
In long-meter, — and possibly in a minor key 
as well, — he sings life's psalm, " Life is real, 
life is earnest." He becomes conscious of 
responsibilities and of his own responsibility. 
A change passes over him somewhat akin to 
that which comes to Donatello of Hawthorne's 
Transformation. 

Ah, happy, thrice happy the man who in 
humility and strength of soul is able to find in 
himself such resources. The age is trusting 
in its " horses " and its " chariots." It is in- 
clined to believe that material forces can bear 
man into life's supreme contentments and 
satisfactions. It someway thinks that ex- 
terior wealth will by some process offer to man 
the best, or prepare man to grasp and to enjoy 
life's richest prizes. Over sea and over land 
[1141 



BEING RICH WITHOUT RICHES 

these " horses " and these " chariots " may 
bear one, and from the depths of the one and 
the gold-bearing rocks of the other it is be- 
lieved these carriers may bring treasures finest 
and most satisfying. But, ah! the bitter 
taste makes sweet cups bitter, blind eyes see 
no lustre, and palsied hands hold no treasure. 
It is the man himself who makes all well because 
he himself is good and able, rich in mind, and 
noble in heart. 

The integrity and fullness of one's own 
nature, after the deposit which was originally 
made at birth, depend upon education. For, 
if education literally means a drawing out, 
it does, as a matter of fact, represent enrich- 
ment. Education aids one to think compre- 
hensively, accurately, truthfully. Education 
increases the number and the worth of one's 
relationships. It gives self-knowledge, self- 
reverence, self-development, self-control. It 
aids in making righteous and wise choices; 
it extends the boundaries of knowledge; it 
helps to create the citizen who is at home in 
all lands and under all conditions. It gives a 
standard and a testimony for judging of values. 
It aids co-operation, for it promotes an appre- 
ciation of men of other conditions. It repre- 
sents the largest and the richest endowment. 

[115] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

It pushes out life's horizon and lifts life's sky; 
it gives graciousness without weakness, strength 
without severity, largeness without visionari- 
ness. Education is fullness. 

One reason why men fall morally is that 
they find no permanent support in themselves. 
Lacking self-guidance they accept guidance of 
others and such guidance may be indeed by 
and unto forbidden paths. Lacking the means 
of enjoyment in themselves they turn to ob- 
jective enjoyments, and these means are liable 
to be objectionable. Finding themselves rather 
stupid company, not having the " interesting 
mind " of Walter Bagehot, they enter into 
companionships which are unworthy. Self- 
worth is a mighty bulwark against accepting 
unworthy environments and unworthy nourish- 
ment. 

In a poem of unknown authorship it is logi- 
cally, as well as beautifully, said: 

" My mind to me a kingdom is: 
Such perfect joy therein I find, 
As far exceeds all earthly bliss 
That world affords, or grows by kind: 
Though much I want what most men have, 
Yet doth my mind forbid me crave. 

" Content I live — this is my stay; 
I seek no more than may suffice: 

[116] 



BEING RICH WITHOUT RICHES 

I press to bear no haughty sway; 
Look — what I lack, my mind supplies! 
Lo! thus I triumph like a king, 
Content with that my mind doth bring." 

I must refer to one other resource which the 
college, I believe, has opened to you. It is 
the resource found in moral good and in re- 
ligion. Moral good exists without religion, 
although religion cannot exist without moral 
good. In life's crises, which you are sure of 
meeting, the hope of clinging to moral goodness 
is supreme. You may find that the beliefs 
which you once held are faltering, that the 
creed that once you glibly repeated you can 
no longer say. You may, in some awful night 
of loneliness or dismay, come to doubt those 
things which have seemed most real and most 
personal. But if, in such crises, you can look 
to the simple landmarks of moral character, 
you are saved and safe. Out of such a night 
of struggle you shall come forth with a faith 
more firm and a certainty more glorious. 

With these resources of moral goodness, I 
would associate the riches found in religion. 
By religion I mean the Christian religion. I 
mean that system of belief which is most fully, 
beautifully, effectively embodied in the teach- 
ings and person of Jesus Christ. I have re- 
[117 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

ferred to the glory of confidence in moral 
truth. A great scientist and theologian, cut 
down before his time, was George John Ro- 
manes. Romanes once said: "And foras- 
much as I am far from being able to agree 
with those who affirm that the twilight doctrine 
of the ' new faith ' is a desirable substitute 
for the waning splendor of * the old,' I am not 
ashamed to confess that with this virtual 
negation of God the universe to me has lost 
its soul of loveliness; and although from hence- 
forth there is pressed upon me terribly intensi- 
fied the meaning of the old words * the night 
cometh when no man can work,' yet when at 
times I think, as think at times I must, of the 
appalling contrast between the hallowed glory 
of the creed which once was mine, and the 
lonely mystery of existence as now I find it, 
at such times I shall ever feel it impossible to 
avoid the sharpest pang of which my nature 
is susceptible. For whether it be due to my 
intelligence not being sufficiently advanced to 
meet the requirements of the age, or whether 
it be due to the memory of those sacred 
associations which to me at least were the 
sweetest that life has given, I cannot but feel 
that for me, and for others that think as I do, 
there is a dreadful truth in those words of the 
[ 118 1 



BEING RICH WITHOUT RICHES 

precept know thyself which has become trans- 
formed into the terrific oracle of (Edipus: 

" May'st thou ne'er know the truth of what thou art." 

But near the close of Romanes' brief, though 
eventful and mighty, life, other sentiments pos- 
sessed and ruled his soul. He found that 
God, whom in the earlier time he had not been 
able to find. In one of his little known but 
moving sonnets he well expresses the final 
conclusion. 

" I ask not for Thy love, Lord: the days 
Can never come when anguish shall atone. 
Enough for me were but thy pity shown 
To me as to the stricken sheep that strays, 
With ceaseless cry for unforgotten ways — 
Oh, lead me back to pastures I have known, 
Or find me in the wilderness alone, 
And slay me, as the hand of mercy slays. 

" I ask not for thy love, nor e'en so much 
As for hope on thy dear breast to lie; 
But be thou still my Shepherd — still with such 
Compassion as may melt to such a cry; 
That so I hear Thy feet, and feel Thy touch, 
And dimly see Thy face ere yet I die." » 

Religion, interpreted thus broadly, pro- 
foundly, highly, should be to the individual, 
light in darkness, companionship in solitude, 
comfort in sorrow, fullness in need, 
f 119 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

These resources, — nature, art, literature, 
friendships, oneself, moral government and 
religion, — are available in different degrees 
to different persons. To some they may be 
largely denied, to others given with almost too 
abounding fullness. Nature is offered to all, 
but the eye may be blind and the ear deaf. 
Did not Pater find Switzerland stupid? Un- 
appreciative, too, may one be of music, though 
very seldom of noble painting. In some form 
literature is a support for all: for it is an ex- 
pression of the highest life and its forms of 
expression are manifold. Friendship, too, 
and moral justice and religious culture, also, 
make a universal appeal to the human im- 
pulses and to the aspiring spirit. Every man, 
too, true to himself must on himself rely. 
From this comprehensive treasure the soul of 
man intuitively and instinctively selects those 
resources which are of richest worth to itself. 
No one shall be famished for the bread, or 
thirsty for the water, of life! 

To the Members of the Graduating Classes: 

I began with the intimation that there are 

resources of higher worth than those found in 

mines of gold, in river courses or prairie loam. 

Has it not become evident that my intimation 

[1201 



BEING RICH WITHOUT RICHES 

needs no demonstration? Is not nature as 
interpreted by the poet, or as humanized in 
life; is not the art of music and of the picture; 
is not literature as embodied in manifold forms; 
is not friendship as seen in larger association 
or in the family circle; is not oneself as 
contemplating great thoughts and experiencing 
great feelings; is not moral good and religious 
truth; is not each a resource richer than 
wealth, and more satisfying than material 
treasure of any form? 

To you, above most people, in fact above all 
people, except those who are your sisters and 
brothers of other colleges, these riches are given. 
The college is happy to have worked with you 
in their creation. The college rejoices in the 
assurance that you will conserve them for your 
mortal life, and also, that when the life mortal 
passes into the life immortal you will find 
treasure laid up for you in heaven akin to the 
treasure which you, as students, have laid up 
on earth. 



121 



VII 

THE AMERICAN COLLEGE STU- 
DENT AND THE UNIVERSITIES 
OF THE WORLD 



Chapter VII 

THE AMERICAN COLLEGE STUDENT 

AND THE UNIVERSITIES OF 

THE WORLD 

[1910] 
" Put on the whole armor of God." — Ephesians vi : 11. 

THE universities of the Far East give a 
training to their students for efficiency; 
the universities of Germany train 
scholars; the Scotch universities train men as 
thinkers; the English universities educate the 
gentleman; — the universities of America 
should unite these four elements, — an educa- 
tion for efficiency, for scholarship, for thinking, 
and as the gentleman, and also should educate 
unto a high and broad type of Christian 
character. 

The American college graduate should repre- 
sent a high type of efficiency. He should be 
prepared to do, and to do something worth 
while. The college is not a professional school; 
it is a preparation for the professional school. 
The type of efficiency which the college gradu- 
ate should stand for is of a general sort. But 
[ 125] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

in it are included, first, principles. No mere 
arbitrary rule is worthy of the graduate's 
following. He recognizes, appreciates, and 
acts upon those fundamental elements of being 
out of which rules arise. A second element 
in the graduate's efficiency is earnestness. 
The college man is not to be a dawdler, a 
dilettante or a loafer. The charge is sometimes 
made that the college man dwells in a past age, 
that he is not keenly alert to the problems of 
the present. Fifty years ago a graduate called 
up from the campus to a friend studying in his 
dormitory room, " Fort Sumter is fired upon! " 
" What do I care," was the answer, " I am 
working on my Greek Grammar." But that 
was fifty years ago. The man was not earnest; 
if he had been studying his Greek Grammar 
properly, he would have recognized the sig- 
nificance of the attack on Fort Sumter. In 
earnestness is a love for people and an allegiance 
to truth. 

The college graduate is also to stand for the 
German university conception of scholarship. 
He need not himself be a scholar. Few men 
are scholars. The broad scholar has passed. 
The man of encyclopaedic learning is no more. 
Knowledge becomes so enormous that to 
possess more than the smallest bit of the vast 
[ 126 1 



UNIVERSITIES OF THE WORLD 

store is impossible. Had it not been for the 
index and the card catalogue the increasing 
wealth of knowledge would have submerged 
humanity. But the college graduate should 
have a sympathy with scholarship, an appre- 
ciation of the cost of scholarship, should under- 
stand the significance and should prize the 
usefulness of scholarship. He should feel 
keenest honor, too, for the scholar. There 
are two types of men which Americans are 
prone to honor; one is the very rich man 
and the other the man of high public office. 
These two types are sure of receiving quite as 
much honor as they deserve. But the scholar 
should be honored more. When Helmholtz, 
one of the greatest of modern scientists, was 
visiting this country seventeen years ago, 
Mr. Bell, of telephone fame, came a long dis- 
tance to New York to say to Helmholtz that 
the principles which the great German had 
discovered were the principles which led him 
to the invention of the telephone. In the 
Chinese social scale the scholar stands first. 
The American college graduate, scholar or no 
scholar, should have the keenest respect and 
the highest honor for the scholar. 

The American college graduate should also 
embody the characteristic of the Scotch uni- 
[127 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

versity; he should be a thinker. He should 
discern and discriminate; he should be able 
to analyze complex phenomena; he should 
disentangle the snarl of conflicting argument, 
should distinguish the necessary from the 
incidental, the relevant from the irrelevant, 
the permanent from the transient. He should 
not fail to assess a fact at its just value, to 
understand the relation of facts, to know the 
difference between an argument and an illus- 
tration, between a premise and a conclusion. 
He should think in terms of language, and these 
terms are of affluence. He should think in 
terms of science, and these terms stand for 
exactness; he should think in terms of mathe- 
matics, and these terms are necessary and 
fundamental; he should think in terms of the 
social sciences, and these terms are touched 
by human emotions and sympathies. Think- 
ing is to be differentiated from both feeling 
and willing. Feeling is important, but feeling 
without thinking is ill regulated, ill propor- 
tioned and disastrous. Willing is important; 
a strong will makes a strong man, but willing 
without thinking foreordains defeat. Willing 
without thinking is a leap without looking, a 
leap into the dark indeed. The college graduate 
is to represent the Scotch ideal of the thinker. 
[128] 



UNIVERSITIES OF THE WORLD 

The American college graduate is also to be 
the gentleman and the gentle-lady. Who is 
the gentleman ? You ask me, — I cannot 
tell you. You do not ask me, and I know. 
He is the one whose mind is trained to see the 
elements and forces of a social condition and 
who is able to adjust himself to them. He 
understands and appreciates. He represents 
the fine art of good manners. What is the 
purpose of the fine arts? It is to give pleasure. 
The gentleman seeks to give pleasure; he is 
at home in any society. He, being rich, can 
be with the poor and give no intimation of his 
wealth; he, being poor, can be with the rich, 
and be happy. He represents a moral element, 
as well as an intellectual He seeks to serve, 
and hurts no one unless obliged to hurt. 
He protects the weakest, he loves the un- 
lovely, he bears with and seeks to save the 
erring. He restores the lost, he helps the help- 
less. 

The American college student represents a 
fifth element which comprehends all I have 
tried to say, — he should be a Christian. 
Who and what is the Christian? The Chris- 
tian is the man who accepts Christ as his 
Master; he finds in Christ's discourse the high- 
est philosophy, — the philosophy concerning 
[129 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

God himself. He finds in Christ's teaching the 
noblest moral code, a code of love for men 
inspired by love for God. He finds in Christ's 
commands life's supreme duties, — duty of 
service. He finds in Christ's invitations life's 
most comfortable rewards. He finds in Christ's 
promises rallying cries for noblest endeavors, 
and in Christ's character he finds the incar- 
nation of divine and human ideals. The 
Christian is not a being apart; the Christian 
is the man efficient, plus the man scholarly, 
plus the man thinking, plus the man gentle- 
manly, and a personality inspired by the pas- 
sion for Christ as his Master. The Christian 
conception represents the highest conception 
of life reaching out towards infinity, the deepest 
conception of life going down to fundamental 
being, the broadest conception of life, teaching 
all men. It stands for all that is noblest, 
most lasting, most human, most divine; it 
goes out above and beyond and beneath the 
conception of the Roman Catholic, the Friend, 
the Hebrew, the Protestant; it belongs to life, 
temporal and eternal, to life of God and of 
man. 

To such a life the college has sought to lead 
you. To such a life the college sends you 
forth. 

[130 1 



UNIVERSITIES OF THE WORLD 

To the Members of the Graduating Classes: 

I have spoken to you out of large interpre- 
tations, out of great histories, out of your 
experiences; I have spoken out of our common 
past. But while I have been speaking we have 
thought together of your future. Ah, that 
future! For it I have no analysis, no prophesy, 
no anxiety indeed. Rather for that future 
I have with you a prayer, a prayer for all that 
is best and noblest and richest for you. My 
prayer is that all the best of your past may be 
made yet better in the unending time that is 
yours. 



131] 



VIII 
THE FOUR-SQUARE MAN 



Chapter VIII 

THE FOUR-SQUARE MAN 

[1911] 

" And the city lieth foursquare: on the east three gates; 
on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and 
on the west three gates." — Revelation xxi: 16 and 13. 

THE splendid panorama of the chapter 
whence are taken these texts gains its 
splendor from values known to man. 
But these splendors are only an environment 
for the Divine One and for man made in the 
divine image. It is neither the new heaven 
nor the new earth nor the foundations of the 
city's walls, garnished with all manner of 
precious stones which form the splendor and 
the beauty, but it is the Lord God Almighty: 
for the Glory of God lightens it and the Lamb 
is the light thereof. The conqueror has also 
here his place. He that overcometh inherits 
all things. God is his Father and he God's 
son. 

It is not therefore a far cry to the inter- 
pretation of the four-square city of God as a 
type of the man who is also four-square and 
[135] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

perfected. Like that city, man has also four 
sides, or parts, and also like the walls of the 
heavenly Jerusalem, man has a trinity of 
approaches to each of these sides of his four- 
square character. 

The first side in man's four-square character 
which one meets is the regard which man has 
for himself. Man can think of himself as a 
second or a third person. He can altruize 
himself. He puts himself beneath his own 
ear or eye of observation. 

As man studies himself he finds three most 
important relations, or elements. He thinks, 
he feels, he chooses. These elements, or forces, 
hold also an important relation to the college. 
The college uses the intellect most constantly 
and fruitfully. Its function is, not to cram 
intellect with knowledge, but so to use 
knowledge that the intellect shall become the 
forceful and delicate instrument of thought. 
Modern education is concerned altogether too 
much with the content of knowledge and not 
sufficiently with the mind of the man to be 
educated. Confusion has resulted in the 
educational process through the vast increase 
in the stores of knowledge. 

The enlargement in every field, linguistic, 
historical, literary, social, economic, political, 
[136 1 



THE FOUR-SQUARE MAN 

has been tremendous. In the old college, the 
student could learn all that the college offered. 
In the new college he has sometimes thought 
that he ought to try to learn all that the college 
offered. In consequence he has become con- 
fused, and sometimes confounded. He is to 
learn, and the college is to learn, that out of 
this vast variety he is to select those studies 
which minister to the enlargement, the growth, 
the strengthening of his whole mind. Different 
minds are enlarged, strengthened, fostered by 
different knowledges. The college should min- 
ister to each. Therefore the college should 
set forth a fitting variety commensurate with 
the whole scheme of things. But the student 
should select that which ministers most directly 
and powerfully to his individual thinking. 
Any other process is waste, — waste of mind, 
which represents the saddest of all wastes. 
But the content is not the only element. The 
teacher is more significant. 

The college man studying himself knows 
that he has a heart, — he feels, he loves, he 
hates, he exults, he is depressed. The peril of 
the college man and woman is, that they 
forget the heart side of life. It is the doorway 
which opens to the great temple of humanity 
itself. No fullness of knowledge, no accuracy 
[1371 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

or comprehensiveness of thought, should for 
a moment be suffered to dry up these central 
springs of feeling. We know men in whom 
education has seemed to produce anaemia. 
Blood has lost its redness; temperature runs 
low. Such a result is too high a price to pay 
for the discipline of the intellect. 

Man also thinks of himself as a will. The 
peril of the earlier education was through 
intellectual remoteness to lessen the willing 
power of the student. The peril of modern 
education is possibly to exercise the will so 
constantly that not sufficient force is left to 
nourish the intellect. The will is through the 
avocations of the college to be strengthened; 
as the intellect, through the vocation of the 
college, is to be disciplined and to be made 
a proper guide for the choices of the will 
itself. 

The intellect, the heart, the will, these are 
three gates which man finds in the thought 
which he has of himself. 

A second side of the four-square college man 
is the thought he has of his work. Who is 
the Frenchman who said, " Life is given as a 
judgment, but work as a reward "? Toward 
his work man holds at least three relations. 
He is first to respect it: it is to be a work wor- 

r 138 1 



THE FOUR-SQUARE MAN 

thy of his respect. It is to be a work worthy 
of his respect because of the service which it 
renders to humanity. Some of you have 
chosen your life work. That choice will prove 
to be lasting. Some of you have chosen your 
life work, and that choice will, for reason good 
or bad, be changed. Some of you have not 
chosen your life work. But whether chosen 
or unchosen, that work does represent a funda- 
mental principle of your being. It represents 
a special force or method by which you will 
become a creator. You stand, as it were, 
before your life work, as the Almighty Creator 
stood before void and vacant space on the first 
morning of the creation. The hour represents 
the mightiest and most pregnant of all oppor- 
tunities, fraught with imperishable conse- 
quences. But below, and above and around all 
minor choices rest the opportunity and the 
duty of a choice eternal in time and universal 
in space. On the night in which Charles 
Kingsley became twenty-one years of age he 
wrote: " My birthnight. I have been for the 
last hour on the seashore, not dreaming, but 
thinking deeply and strongly, and forming 
determinations which are to affect my destiny 
through time and through eternity. Before 
the sleeping earth and the sleepless sea and 
[139 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

stars I have devoted myself to God: a vow- 
never (if He gives me the faith I pray for) to 
be recalled." 

Whatever the calling may be to which you 
devote yourself, know that you are called by 
and for and of God. 

In your thought of your work you are yet 
not to forget the duty of aptness for it. You 
are to become an expert. You are to know 
your special work, said Emerson, if you do 
not you are undone. One great contribution 
of the last thirty years is the increasing respect 
for the expert. The opinion of the mind 
trained to judge evidence in each of the great 
fields of endeavor is held in increasingly higher 
regard. The world has come to be able to 
afford the expert. The division of labor 
permits his training. Therefore in your special 
work make yourself just as able as you can. 
Be willing to spend years of hardest toil in 
order to become a supreme master. 

It is also not to be forgotten in thinking of 
your work, that your work, going out from you, 
will return to you and will educate you, the 
worker. Your hand should not be formed into 
the tool which it handles, but the tool should 
form, enlarge, refine the hand. The faithful- 
ness with which you do your work should 
[140] 



THE FOUR-SQUARE MAN 

make you a man more faithful. The place 
where you work should not be a prison, much 
less a brazen one, as Matthew Arnold says, 
but it should be a palace, with skylights. Let 
your work be so noble, so fine that in its 
reaction on you, it will make you finer and 
nobler. 

A third side of you, a four-square being, is 
your thought of man. On this side are three 
gateways of honor, love, and co-operation. 
The three gateways are closely joined together 
and form one great way of approach. Man is 
more than his work, and humanity is more 
than all its achievements. The word " means " 
always seems to me significant. We ask if 
A. B. is a man of large means, inquiring is he 
rich? The very question indicates the sub- 
ordination of wealth to manhood. Wealth is 
a means, a measure, a method to, and of, 
and by, man. Man is most worthy of honor. 
Made in God's image he is declared to be, 
which indicates that God honors humanity 
by existing in its image. The honor paid to 
man is in its essence an honor paid to divinity. 
Fallen, stained, wretched, bereft, every hu- 
man life has still in itself a bit of the divine. 
Honor it. 

With honor is joined the gateway of love. 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

The command of Christ to love your neighbor 
as yourself is too narrow, too low. It ought 
to be as it is, supplanted by Christ's new com- 
mandment that ye love one another as I have 
loved you. You are to love your neighbor 
more than you love yourself. You would 
prefer to cheat yourself, or to do harm to 
yourself rather than to cheat or to do harm to 
your neighbor. How did Christ love? He 
loved unto death; thus you are to love the 
world. 

The humanity which you honor and love 
you are to co-operate with. With men, as 
well as for them, are you to labor. We know 
great souls, strong personalities, who cannot 
work with other men. Their service, which 
ought to be great, becomes weakness. I 
knew two great men who once served as college 
presidents, whose administrations were stormy 
and largely fruitless because they could not 
work with their associates. If college men 
fail in their life's career, they fail for one of 
two reasons, either moral weakness or in- 
ability to get on with men. They are either 
weak in will or are cantankerous. Of these 
two causes of failure, cantankerousness is the 
more common. Work with men, like yourself, 
unlike yourself, weak men, wicked men, 
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THE FOUR-SQUARE MAN 

strong men, good men: work with them in 
honor and love for all men. 

The fourth side of the four-square man bears 
the name " The Thought of God." God, to 
know him is impossible. Your thought of 
him must be very inadequate. But your 
thought of him is of supreme consequence to 
yourself, as his being is of supreme consequence 
to your being. In your thought of him is set 
therefore the great gateway of mystery. Him 
you cannot know. The finite never compre- 
hends the infinite, time never overtakes 
eternity. Beyond the farthest reach of space 
is still endlessness. A God whom you can 
know is no God. Christ came as a revelation 
of God, but even knowing Christ, Son of Man, 
Son of God, you cannot know God because of 
the limitation of your powers of knowing. 
You could see the universe if you had the eye 
of the universe. You could know God if you 
were God. Only God knows God. Therefore 
you stand in mystery as you think of the 
infinite Being. 

But by the side of the gateway of mystery 
stands the gateway marked " Obedience." 
Your sovereign you may not know, but his 
laws you may read and observe. The most 
important laws of God are most evident. 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

They form the cardinal virtues, the great 
hinge principles of character; justice, tem- 
perance, bravery are among them. The laws 
of God are also the graces that are summed 
up in graciousness, favor to the ill-deserving. 
The ten commandments of the twentieth of 
Exodus are among his laws, good for the State 
and the individual today as they were good 
for the Jewish theocracy of four thousand 
years ago. The graces of the fifth of Matthew, 
the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, 
are as precious today for the common planes 
of our living as they were for the disciples on 
the mountainside two thousand years ago. 
Your thought of God includes obedience to 
those fundamental instincts and principles 
which help to constitute not only the great 
state but also the pure family and the noble 
individual person. To those instincts of sym- 
pathy, helpfulness, purity, love, you are to be 
joyfully obedient. 

In your thought, also, of God, is set the 
gateway of worship. God dwells in mystery, 
but of him we do know sufficient to worship. 
The greatest of modern philosophers has said 
that the two most awful elements in life are the 
heavens at night and the moral law, " I 
ought." These two great solemnities, and 

r 144 1 



THE FOUR-SQUARE MAN 

more, are embodied in our worship of the 
Eternal. To the conscience within, to the 
majesty of the nightly heaven, let there be 
added the grandeur of the fathomless ocean 
and the eternity of ever-ceasing and never- 
ceasing time. And the infinities of Personality, 
whose power is omnipotence, whose knowledge 
is omniscience, whose presence is omni- 
presence, let all these be united together and 
let the individual man seek to approach unto 
Him. This approach is worship, worship of 
God. 

And the city lieth four-square. The city 
is man. On the one side of the square, man's 
thought of himself; on a second side, man's 
thought of his work; on the third side, 
man's thought of man; on the fourth side, 
man's thought of God. 

On the east three gates, on the north three 
gates, on the south three gates and on the 
west three gates. In man's thought of himself 
are found the gateways of intellect, of heart 
and of will. On the side of man's thought of 
his work are found the gateways of respect 
of his work, of aptness for doing it, and of 
education through it. On the side of man's 
thought of man are found the triple gateways 
of honor, of love, of co-operation. On the 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

fourth side is found man's thought of God. 
In this infinite wall are set the gateways of 
mystery, of obedience to God, and of worship 
of Him. Such is my thought of the four- 
square man, which I would have you each be. 

To the Members of the Graduating Classes: 

You will recall that it is said one side of 
the four-square city lies toward the east, one 
side toward the north, one side toward the 
south and one side toward the west. Such are 
the relations of your life and of your character. 

On the one side are found the origin and the 
source of your being. It stands for the sun- 
rising of the east. The north may represent 
the cold and the chill and the remoteness of 
your nature, but in it shall be found superb 
vigor and mighty strength. The south shall 
stand for the sunniness and warmth of your 
heart turned toward all men. The west shall 
point toward the close of your life's brief day, 
but it also shall, in the passing of the endless 
years, represent the transmitting of your west 
into some east, whose sun shall be forever 
rising, but never coming to its declining. 

I wish for you each that as you are of God, 
you also may dwell in Him, and that as you are 
human, you may dwell with men, and that as 
[ 146 1 



THE FOUR-SQUARE MAN 

your sun, rising well in the eastern sky, passes 
on over its zenith into the evening hour, the 
promise of the morning shall be assured in 
the beauty and the splendor which belongs to 
the eternal city of God. 



[ 147 



IX 

PUBLIC DISORDER AND THE 
HIGHER EDUCATION 



Chapter IX 

PUBLIC DISORDER AND THE HIGHER 
EDUCATION 

[1912] 

"And ye shall hear of wars and of rumors of wars." — 
Matthew xxiv: 6. 

IT is an insurging world. Man is rebelling 
against his institutions. The longer exist- 
ing and more natural are these forces, 
agencies, and conditions, the more rebellious 
does he seem to be. After many years of 
armed civil peace our nearest foreign neighbor 
of the south is in sedition. Overseas, in the 
twelve months since we gathered in this place, 
England has passed through two crises which 
have demoralized industry, strained the Eng- 
lish Constitution, brought havoc to the regular 
and recognized methods of life, flung millions 
into anxiety, and brought death to hundreds of 
lives. In this time the ancient power of Persia 
has been in the travail of revolution, the Italian 
Government has sought with menace and 
bloodshed to regain a long-lost hold in North 
Africa, and certain parts and classes of the 
[1511 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

European and Asiatic Empire of the Czar have 
been saved from revolution by the crushing 
hand of military despotism. India, at peace 
for a time, knows that any day there may 
break forth the flames of unrest and of anarchy. 
Above all, China has within these last months 
expelled its rulers, and in the midst of provin- 
cial revolution established a republic for which 
every American has best wishes. Today, in 
our country, the hate of partizan passion within 
party and the hate of partizan passion without 
and against party inflames the mind and 
heart of every citizen. More than one-half 
of the world is in rebellion. The world is 
an insurging world. The insurging is po- 
litical. 

The insurging is also social. The Victorian 
age has, like a late staying guest, finally passed 
out. The era of good feeling has vanished. 
The social quietness, the mediocre respect- 
ability, the timid decorousness, the life which 
was comparative because it was not superlative, 
the era of ideals, but of ideals so low that they 
did not create despair in trying to attain unto 
them, nor so high that they quickened great 
enthusiasm in the probability of reaching 
them, have all gone, both in England and 
America. We have passed from an age of 
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PUBLIC DISORDER 

statics into the age of dynamics. We have 
come into the age of force, forces, and of 
forcefulness. We have entered from condi- 
tions into movements. The age of indi- 
vidualism becoming aggressiveness; of aggres- 
siveness becoming unrest; of unrest becoming 
social and industrial reformation; of reforma- 
tion becoming social and industrial revolution; 
of revolution tending toward anarchy, seems 
at last to have come upon us. 

This state is industrial, moreover, as well as 
social and political. 

The industrial unrest in the United States 
and in Western Europe is more than evident. 
Most great producers or distributors of goods, 
of steel, iron, coal, cotton, and woolen fabrics; 
most carrying systems, steam, electric and 
water, involving scores of trades and hundreds 
of thousands, even millions, of workmen, are 
in constant jeopardy of positive interruption, 
or of annihilation. A twenty-four hour notice 
given by the Directors of Trades Unions and 
Labor Federations may stop thousands of 
trades, interrupt the recognized channels of 
communication, throw society into chaos and 
may bring certain countries like England, with 
twelve days of rations ahead, to the actual 
borders of starvation. The industrial world 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

is so builded together and tied up, part by 
and to part, that disorder in any one part 
produces, or tends to produce, disorder in every 
part. This unity belongs not only to industrial 
processes but also to the industrial workmen. 
Workmen are banded together in ascending 
scales of comprehensiveness. The dock la- 
borers have their union. The railroad em- 
ployees have theirs. Both may be members of 
a Federation of Carriers, and the Federation of 
Carriers may be members of some higher unit. 
Not only are these unions national, but also 
they are international. They cover the world. 
This industrial unrest is indeed no new 
thing. But it is to be said that it tends to 
increase in intensity. Working men are be- 
coming conscious of their power when they are 
joined together. They have entered politics 
and the Labor Party is a recognized politi- 
cal and civil body. Both in the United States 
and in England, the Labor Party becomes a 
distinct force in the great parties. Without 
its help, the Liberal Party in England would be 
unable to maintain itself in power. In America 
the decision of the Labor Party to work with 
or against the Republican or the Democratic 
organization, would probably determine an 
election. But be it said, that not a few leaders 

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PUBLIC DISORDER 

of the working men have come to the conclu- 
sion that they can more effectively, as well as 
more speedily, get what they want to get, by 
Revolution than by Legislation. 

Industrial war is, therefore, the declared 
resulting process. War is war, whether the 
warfare be rifles, or a strike, and picketing is 
picketing, whether it be along the Rhine, or 
about the docks of the Hudson or of the 
Thames; and in neither case can such picketing 
be described as peaceful. 

It must, I think, be usually granted that the 
history of arbitration methods, conciliation 
boards, and other agencies for avoiding or ad- 
justing strikes and lockouts, has for the past 
twenty-five years been rather a sorry record. 
Agreements, hard to arrive at, have been easily 
broken. Understandings become speedily mis- 
understandings. Misunderstandings produce 
suspicions, and suspicions eventuate readily in 
quarrels. The result is, that the employer of 
large numbers of workmen, and the great 
bodies of workmen themselves, are constantly, 
when not engaged in declared war, in a con- 
dition of armed neutrality. The white flag of 
truce flies no small share of the time, but it is 
easily and frequently displaced by the red flag. 
But be it said: the white flag stands for only 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

a truce, and the red does stand for active and 
alert campaigning. 

The industrial unrest is both the cause and 
result of socialism. Gladstone said, near the 
close of his unique career, that socialism formed 
the next question for humanity to take up. 
Towards the close of his long life, John Stuart 
Mill made a similar intimation: "Socialism 
has for better or for worse come to pervade 
society in both Europe and the United States 
more generally and more deeply than is 
commonly believed." 

Go to Oxford, or to Cambridge, and one 
finds socialism moving in the atmosphere, 
filling the hearts of many disciples, and of as 
many apostles. In scores of American colleges, 
little bands of these socialist workers and 
speakers are found. In theological seminaries, 
both among students and teachers, are enrolled 
adherents and expounders. I am not now 
declaring against the thing itself, or against 
this propagandism. I am simply interpreting 
such a condition as existing among college men 
and intimating that it is profoundly significant. 
For the belief of the abler and more serious 
college men of one age will become the belief 
of the people of the next generation, and the 
practice of the generation still following. 
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PUBLIC DISORDER 

As I have said, this unrest is industrial, 
social and political. But the movement has 
gone far beyond the legislative process in its 
radicalism. It seems to bear recollections 
of the Reign of Terror, and of the Commune. 
The French Revolution helped to give Europe 
(excepting England, which got its liberty in the 
peaceful Revolution of 1688) liberty and 
nationality. The present movement is not 
concerned with either liberty or nationality. 
Its cry is "A Living Wage." Its demand is 
for " Meat." (It has bread.) Its will is for 
" Opportunity." It wants the " Open Door." 

A comprehensive remark to be made about 
these movements more or less allied, and about 
the people who constitute these movements, 
themselves more or less diversified, is that these 
masses, on the one side, workmen, employees, 
and on the other side, the classes, capitalists, 
or employers, are exceedingly antagonistic to 
each other. They regard themselves, or at 
least are inclined to regard themselves, as 
enemies. The workmen often, too often, hate 
the employer, and the employer often, too 
often, is indifferent to the workmen. Ad- 
vantages gained by one are regarded as a loss 
to the other; disadvantages suffered by one 
are interpreted as advantages gained by the 
[1571 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

other. The workmen think of their em- 
ployers as tyrants, and believe that the em- 
ployers look on them as machines to be run at 
the highest efficiency, and, when worn out, 
to be flung on the human scrap-pile. The 
employers regard, or give some reason for be- 
lieving that they regard, the workmen as men 
who are chiefly interested in doing the least 
work for the most money, who are willing to 
break their promises, careless of their em- 
ployers' rights, regardless of their own duties, 
without conscientiousness or zeal. Such an- 
tagonisms are not universal, but such antago- 
nisms are altogether too general. This condi- 
tion, inexpressibly sad, has arisen in part at 
least from the remoteness of the employer 
and the employee. The growth of all industrial 
undertakings, to embrace thousands or tens of 
thousands of workmen, makes it impossible for 
the individual employer to know the indi- 
vidual workman. The workman comes to be 
known as a number, and ceases to be a per- 
sonality. Humanity is thus submerged on 
both sides and with this submersion spring up 
dislikes, recriminations, enmities of all sorts. 

I suppose it must also be confessed that the 
leadership of these movements is inadequate. 
It is a leadership intense and narrow. It is 
[158 1 



PUBLIC DISORDER 

inclined to see one side only. That justice lies 
with the workmen and injustice with the em- 
ployer and capitalist is too often the pre- 
sumption that lies behind all reflection, and 
that forms the basis of executive procedure. 
The duty owed the people, the general in- 
terests of the community, have a small part 
in deliberation or decision. That the employer 
is completely free from guilt is never for one 
instant to be intimated. Many years ago the 
reported remark from the head of a great 
railway system that " Let the public be 
damned " became a noisome stench in the 
public nostrils. 

It is true that there are exceptions to the 
narrowness of the leadership under which 
workmen move. John Mitchell is an excep- 
tion; but the dislike for one of his large type 
helps to prove the proposition as it refers to 
America. John Burns is also an exception, 
but the dislike of many workingmen for John 
Burns helps to prove the chief proposition. 

Now, in this condition, sketched so imper- 
fectly in broad lines, " What can the college and 
the universities do to make things better? " The 
question is significant. For the higher educa- 
tion does not desire to nurse a fugitive and 
cloistered virtue. It desires to serve — as it 
[159 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

ought to serve — the highest, broadest, deepest, 
and most enduring interests of man. 

The higher education can help its students to 
look at facts as they are, and to weigh the 
evidence which these facts present. Of course, 
the colleges have always been seeking to achieve 
this result. The colleges have always been 
trying to teach the significant fact that two 
and two make four. A significant fact, indeed, 
for always there are some in the community 
who are trying to squeeze two and two into 
three, and an equal number who are trying to 
enlarge them into five. In the training of this 
power of looking at facts as they are, and in 
weighing evidence, lies the worth of education. 
But the college has a special duty laid upon 
itself of transmuting this general obligation 
into a duty specific and particular. For to the 
great social and industrial facts one is specially 
liable to be blind. The facts are not like the 
reforms of the Gracchi — remote. They are 
immediate. So close are they that it is difficult 
to see them as they are, to interpret their re- 
lations, to point out their significance, or to 
lay down a course of conduct based upon their 
meanings. But they are pregnant with new 
births for men. Their nearness generates 
passion. Truth's white light has a small 
F 160 1 ! 



PUBLIC DISORDER 

chance for shining. For better or worse, for 
destruction, or for construction in this difficult 
environment, they must be interpreted. Such 
interpretation, the college can inspire its men 
to seek to make. It should help men to see 
these phenomena sanely and steadily, and to 
see them whole. 

The college, further, may give greater place 
to what I call the human sciences. These 
sciences include history, economics, govern- 
ment, and sociology. The increase in the em- 
phasis laid on these subjects has, in a score of 
years, been vast. It is hardly possible to 
exaggerate the increase. It is not for me to 
depreciate the worth of the natural sciences, 
either as intellectual disciplines or as revela- 
tions of the wonders of the creative process. 
Let the natural sciences have their full and 
adequate place. But I do believe the social 
and industrial conditions demand that college 
graduates shall go forth with some under- 
standing of the complexity and seriousness of 
these conditions. For under these conditions, 
the people are misled. Political and civil 
harm results. The disease spreads. The pa- 
tient grows worse. Where can help be found? 
I know too well the imperfections and weak- 
nesses of the colleges. But if help is coming, it 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

must come in accordance with the great human 
laws which are as real as, though harder to 
understand than, the great laws of nature. 
These laws, these principles, of social, political, 
civil, and industrial well-being are studied, 
considered, related to each other in the colleges 
and universities. The men who have been 
students of these laws and principles are above 
all others best qualified to apply these laws to 
the body politic and social. Humanity goes on 
repeating its experiments which have failed. 
Its memory is short. The colleges stand for 
accumulated thought. They represent and 
present the history of human experimentation. 
The colleges should save men, at least some- 
what, from repeating their great social errors 
and mistakes. The result of all the help the 
colleges can give will be poor enough, but these 
results are the most precious and effective 
which humanity in its present stage of culti- 
vation can attain unto. 

But there is a further method which the 
colleges may use in overcoming the anarchistic 
tendencies of the social and industrial move- 
ment. This method consists in the establish- 
ment of departments of the human sciences, 
for the special advantage of men of mature 
years who are especially interested in these 

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PUBLIC DISORDER 

subjects and who have not been able, by 
reason of their limitations, to give themselves 
a proper education. This suggestion is by no 
means new. It bears memories of move- 
ments which have a somewhat prolonged 
history. The workingmen's colleges of fifty 
years ago, in which the noble Maurice and the 
versatile Kingsley were founders and sponsors 
and supporters, embody the same great idea. 
Today no better exponent of the movement is 
found than is incarnated in Ruskin College 
at Oxford. The difficulties in laying such a 
foundation are neither few in number nor slight. 
The ordinary members of a college faculty are 
seldom able to undertake such a task. Their 
duties are altogether too heavy for any such 
permanent additional service. For a brief 
time they may take such work upon them- 
selves but not as a lasting service. A special 
staff, therefore, is to be organized; and such 
a staff, competent in mind and conscience, is 
hard to secure. Furthermore, many men de- 
siring to become students are found to lack a 
proper general education. They have not 
the intellectual qualifications to take up special 
social studies, than which no subjects are more 
complex. Their eagerness and enthusiasm go 
a certain way — with some men, a long way — 
[163] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

in overcoming the lack of trained mental 
power; but enthusiasm cannot be accepted as 
a substitute for a trained intellect. Though, 
therefore, every college may well consider the 
question of offering such courses, especially if 
placed in the midst of an urban community, 
yet the outlook is not bright for results either 
comprehensive or lasting. 

I am also inclined to believe that the regular 
college officers may make a most effective use 
of their own wisdom and counsels in securing 
the great end of social and industrial peace. 
It is a perilous thing for a professor or president 
to give specific advice to a new student re- 
garding the choice of a calling. Principles he 
may lay down. Their application should be 
committed to the man who must bear the 
responsibilities of the choice. But officers 
should feel free to intimate, and perhaps do 
more than intimate, the opportunities open in 
social service as a vocation, or open even as 
an avocation. I have known the head of an 
institution of five hundred students to make 
plain suggestions to hundreds in respect to a 
life's calling. Jowett, of Balliol, was a supreme 
master in such guidance. It is at this point 
that the college may render especially effective 
service. I have referred to the lack of wise 
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PUBLIC DISORDER 

leadership in the great social movements. 
Cannot the colleges do more in securing such 
leadership? Cannot the college train men up 
into such intellectual power and with such 
human sympathies that its graduates shall feel 
the impulse to enter into such communities 
and be able to merit such leadership? Many 
men in college are, as I have said, more or less 
socialistic. If they, entering life and taking 
part either formally or informally in these 
tremendous affairs, can keep their judgment 
large and clear, they should in time be able 
to give great help in offering right direction 
to these movements unto the happiest results. 
In quite a different field, and one more or 
less non-academic, it is possible for the colleges 
to put forth efforts. I have referred, as a sad 
feature in the social and industrial condition, 
to the antagonism of the masses and the 
classes. Can the colleges do aught to mitigate 
such reciprocal enmities? Of course, college 
men, mingling and meeting together and going 
out into their diverse callings and relationships, 
are better prepared through common knowl- 
edge and acquaintance to promote comradery. 
But I also believe that a simple and genuine 
religious basis and atmosphere would aid in 
dispelling antagonisms. Is there any such 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

basis on which more men, college and non- 
college, could succeed in standing? I know 
of one and of only one. That is Christ's 
Sermon on the Mount. In this Great Dis- 
course, that part which forms the most fitting 
basis is known as " The Beatitudes." One 
need not be a Roman Catholic as such or a 
Protestant as such; one need not subscribe to 
the occidental interpretations of Christ's char- 
acter or words, interpretations which the 
orientals say are wrong or false. But if men 
would agree to accept of the words of the 
Sermon on the Mount in respect to the Supreme 
Being, in respect to altruistic and selfward 
duties, there would be formed a deep, as well 
as a broad, foundation for men helping each 
other. I wish to appeal for a place for the Ten 
Beatitudes. I would write them into a Creed: 
— " I believe in humility of spirit and humble- 
ness of life; in the comfort of those who mourn; 
in the blessedness of those hungering and thirst- 
ing after righteousness; in mercy; in the 
vision of God belonging to the pure in heart, 
and in the peacemakers as the children of God; 
and I also believe in the willingness of enduring 
persecution for righteousness' sake, and in the 
blessed assurance that those who endure shall 
have great reward." 

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PUBLIC DISORDER 

It may not be further out of place for one to 
say that there is a need today of a revival of 
the humanity of humanity. One can say this 
without running the risk of being judged as 
a follower of Comte. There has been a 
revival in the study of, and of love for, nature. 
From being an unknown enemy of the ancients, 
nature has become through the stages of poetic 
interpretation, of aesthetic appreciation, and 
of scientific research, a known and great friend. 
A similar transformation and elevation is surely 
taking place in the study of humanity. The 
movement for arbitration and for peace among 
nations is a token of what has been achieved 
and is a promise of what is to be secured. The 
present may be a neap tide in the process. 
The sense of the value of the individual human 
life seems to be just now suffering an eclipse, 
but it is a temporary one. The value of men 
as men, the worth of humanity as humanity, 
the significance of the human, is ever to be 
emphasized. Man is neither a thing nor a 
brute. He is a man and because he is a man 
he is like unto God. 

To the Members of the Graduating Classes: 

You, my friends, who are about to graduate, 
are to go forth from the college into what we 
[167] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

call the world. You are coming to your 
kingdom at a great time, a time great in its 
problems and forces. The problems are many, 
complex, urgent. The forces are also many 
and powerful. I congratulate you. You have 
no soft job to do, no easy life to live. Thank 
God that you are able to endure hardness 
without becoming hard. I do not warn you. 
I encourage you, and hope for you, and bless 
you, and pray for you. Those that be with 
you and for you are more than those that be 
against you. Go on, like Christian in Bun- 
yan's immortal allegory. Let not Vanity 
Fair weaken. Let not by-ways tempt. Let 
not Doubting Castle imprison, nor the Slough 
of Despond engulf, nor Giant Despair frighten. 
Go on and go upward, O Pilgrims! The 
land of Beulah beckons you and from this 
land, you shall enter through the gates into 
the City Celestial, where wars have ceased, 
and flags are furled, for all men love each 
other. 



168 



X 

THE INTERPRETATION OF LIFE 



Chapter X 

THE INTERPRETATION OF LIFE 

[1913] 
" What is your life? " — James iv : 14. 

LIFE is the source of life: from it life 
springs. Life is the condition of life: in 
it life moves and has its being. Life 
is the method of life: it is vital, not mechanical. 
Life is the force of life: it is impelled by itself, 
not by exterior powers. Life is the end of life: 
more life and fuller is the final cause. But 
when one has said this, one has still failed to 
answer the question of the text — "What is 
your life? " 

To attempt to tell what life is, is not our 
problem. Rather it is the far simpler one 
with which we are content, the interpretation 
of life, hoping that through this interpretation 
one may secure some little light upon the 
question itself. 

First. The interpretation is to be made in 

terms of truth. Truth is the knowledge of 

things as they are. It is the correspondence 

of understanding with reality. It is essentially 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

the photograph of what is. It represents 
existence, forces, conditions. The man who 
knows these forces and conditions is the man 
who comes the most clearly to interpret life 
itself. In this process he is to apply the tests 
of truth. Those tests which Descartes used 
are still valid. First: To believe nothing 
except upon clear and certain evidence. 
Second: To analyze every question thor- 
oughly. Third: To use logic. Fourth: To 
observe with care. In other words, the man 
who is truthful is to confirm, verify. Evidence 
he is to weigh; facts he is to value; processes 
to understand; complex conditions to separate; 
separated truths to put together. He is to 
know things broadly, for things are broad; 
to know things highly, for things are lofty; 
to know things deeply, for things are pro- 
found; to know things intimately, for things 
are of details; to know things comprehen- 
sively, for things are wide. Experience is to 
make truth more truthful. Observation is to 
extend knowledge. The perils of self-deception 
are to be recognized. The personal equation 
is to be adjusted in making up all verdicts. 
The white light without is to find an ally in the 
pure soul within. The heart is to inspire but 
never clog the intellect. The heat of feeling 
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THE INTERPRETATION OF LIFE 

is not to be sufficient to melt the lines of mental 
observation. 

For giving you the power to interpret life 
as truth, the college holds a special and peculiar 
method. This method belongs to the physical 
sciences. The essence of these sciences is 
accuracy; — to know things as they are and 
to express such knowledge. I always look 
upon certain balances in one of the laboratories 
with peculiar reverence. Our own Professor 
Morley once said to me, speaking of his 
balances, which have historic meaning, that 
their delicacy could be best expressed, in his 
thinking, by comparison with a load of hay 
upon the hay scales, in which the change of 
a single straw would indicate the difference in 
the tons' weight. Now, you have forgotten 
many facts of chemistry and physics; others 
you will proceed to forget. But the methods 
which you have employed, the emphasis which 
you have laid upon the worth of truth, will 
remain as lasting intellectual forces and 
permanent treasures. Herein, by the way, lies 
the essence of a college education as a training 
in the methods to be employed in after-life, 
though not a training in the content of knowl- 
edge or of affairs with which you will deal in 
after-life. 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

When one seeks for examples of such inter- 
pretation of life as truth, one finds many names 
springing to the lips, but the name of Darwin 
comes first — Darwin laboring year after 
year in his laboratory and gardens at Down. 
In his altogether too brief autobiography, he 
says: "Therefore my success as a man of 
science, whatever this may have meant to the 
world, has been determined as far as I can 
judge by complex and diversified mental con- 
ditions. Of these the most important have 
been the love of science, unbounded patience 
in long reflecting over any subject, industry in 
observing and collecting facts, and a fair share 
of invention as well as of common sense." 

May you, in your interpretation of life as 
truth, find yourself having the same noble 
elements and qualities! The sciences which 
you have studied in college represent one of 
the helps which the college has given or can 
give in making such an interpretation. 

Second. The interpretation of life is also 
to be made through development and growth. 
Life is development, the outfolding of forces 
inherent in itself; and also it is growth, the 
addition of forces unto itself from without. I 
have known thousands of men and women in 
college, and also I have followed them after 
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THE INTERPRETATION OF LIFE 

college. I think of one, whom I will call G, 
a noble boy, quiet in manner, keen in his 
young intellect, faithful to his work, who has 
now become one of the great legal counselors 
of this nation. I think of another, M, able, 
commanding, popular, permitting his lower 
appetites at times to rule the higher, who 
finally compelled the higher to rule the lower, 
who came to fill great political offices, for 
which men strive in a republic. I think of 
still another, who, when in college, was helpful 
to every other man and to every cause, and 
who came to be most beloved of all ministers 
known to me. I think of another who, in her 
undergraduate days, sang poems, gracious and 
happy and reverent, who has continued to sing 
for widest audiences, and whose life is, in 
itself, a poem. I think of another whom I 
will call A, who, in college, was devoted to 
every activity, who won high scholarship 
prizes, keen, alert, sympathetic, who is now 
recognized as one of the great writers of his 
type of literature. To scores of others I might 
refer. Life has, to each of them, meant 
development and growth. The life that was in 
them in the undergraduate days has passed on 
from strength unto strength: "They have 
added to their faith, virtue; and to their 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

virtue, knowledge; and to their knowledge, 
temperance; and to their temperance, patience; 
and to their patience, godliness; and to their 
godliness, brotherly kindness; and to their 
brotherly kindness, charity." Their life has 
been an addition and multiplication. 

Every subject, fitted for a place in the 
college, provides such development. Language 
and literature represent such a growth. I 
chanced to know Hiram Bingham, the apostle 
to the Gilbert Islands, and the grammarian 
and lexicographer of their language. He has 
told me of the simplicity of their tongue, and 
of the poverty of their vocabulary, except, he 
said, in words for anger. Now contrast such a 
simple speech with a highly complex language 
like the Greek, or with an accurate and exact 
tongue like the French, or with the amplitude 
of words of the English. The development or 
growth represents a new world of speech. Liter- 
ature shows a similar enlargement. Think of 
the contrast between the mind of Chaucer, 
meeting the realities of life and of nature, and 
the mind of Tennyson and Browning and 
Matthew Arnold, seeking to interpret the outer 
or the inner vision of the last century. Lan- 
guage and literature are thus illustrations of 
the development and growth which charac- 
[1761 



THE INTERPRETATION OF LIFE 

terizes and interprets life. Your life is not 
indifference, stagnation, listlessness. It is 
vital, progressive, the sum of aggressive 
vitalities. 

Matthew Arnold wrote to his mother at the 
age of forty-one, saying: " I have ripened and 
am ripening, so slowly that I shall be glad of 
as much time as possible. Yet I can feel, I 
rejoice to say, an inward spring which seems 
more and more to gain strength and to promise 
to resist outward shocks if they must come, 
however rough." Such ripening may there 
be in you, firm, rich, complete. 

Third. The interpretation of life also means 
duty. Duty represents usually something to 
be done. It stands for action. It is service 
and service for others. It means the applica- 
tion of Christ's command, " Love your neigh- 
bor as yourself." For such an interpretation 
of life I know you are eager, almost restless, yet 
a little fearful, turning your eyes and heart 
back with longing to the last four years. You 
are inclined to contrast present college years 
with what you think life is to be. The future 
in the world you believe is the real thing, the 
past in the college you believe has not been 
the real thing. Yet more alike you will find 
the two to be than you now imagine. The 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

value of forces, the value of ideals and idealism, 
the value of camaraderie, the worth of clear and 
large and deep thinking, the motives, large or 
petty, the rivalries, the disappointments, the 
triumphs — all these that make up the college 
years, you will find to constitute the years 
following. The able men and women will 
continue to be able and to be gaining in 
strength. The same kings and queens and 
castles with which you have played upon the 
academic chessboard, you will use upon the 
public chessboard afterward. That board will 
be larger and perhaps the pieces a bit less white 
or a bit more crimson, but the laws of the 
playing are the same, and the results of a kind 
quite alike. 

In interpreting life as duty, and duty as 
service to others, you are choosing a vocation, 
or better a vocation is choosing or calling you. 
Of this election I want to say two things: 

First, your calling is to be one which will 
give highest benefit — benefit both in method 
and result. Any calling which you will con- 
sider is good. You have only to think what 
calling is the better or the best for you. In 
this weighing of evidence you are to think 
wherein lies the greatest need, and also to 
think what is your own power for filling the 
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THE INTERPRETATION OF LIFE 

greatest need. Yet when these two points are 
weighed, not surprised shall I be that you are 
led into a calling unlike that which you had 
laid down for yourself. God has in mind 
some better thing for you, without which you 
would not have been made perfect. Yet, be 
it said, your preparation for your chosen calling 
may prove to be the very best preparation for 
the calling which God has in store for you. 
Each duty done knowingly becomes light and 
leading for other duties not known. Be true 
and be trusting! 

This leads me to my second remark: with 
your vocation, useful as it is, unite an avoca- 
tion which also shall be useful. Along the 
main road of your life let there lie a side-path. 
The unofficial organization of the community 
is a mark of our time: the boards, the societies, 
the associations, of and for men and women, 
are numbered by the thousands. They go 
from Homes for Foundlings to Homes for 
Aged Couples, and from Unions for Railroad 
Firemen to Theosophical clubs. In such 
service have a share. Choose that form which 
makes the strongest appeal to you. Do not 
dissipate energy. Only when the northern lakes 
are compressed into the Niagara River do 
they get power. 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

If the physical sciences help to interpret life 
as truth, and language and literature as 
development, so also do the sociological 
sciences help to interpret life as service. One 
among the mighty lessons of such teaching is 
that " No man liveth unto himself and no 
man dieth unto himself." A further lesson is 
that if a man attempt to live unto and by 
himself, he dies as surely as does the man who 
tries to support himself by his own blood. 
The popularity of such studies helps to prove, 
as it does illustrate, that man, in seeking to 
help himself today, is making life worth living. 

Life is indeed duty. It is to seek to live as 
Mary Lyon lived. Upon her tombstone at 
Mount Holyoke are cut these words — a 
memorable sentence given in her last teaching 
to her school: "There is nothing in the uni- 
verse that I fear, but that I shall not know all 
my duty or shall fail to do it." Quite as noble 
and more modest it seems to me is the in- 
scription found upon the tombstone of Sir 
Henry Lawrence at Lucknow. Struck by a 
shell in that memorable siege, and knowing 
that he was soon to die, Sir Henry asked that 
this inscription might be placed above his 
grave: " Here lies Sir Henry Lawrence, the 
man who tried to do his duty." 
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THE INTERPRETATION OF LIFE 

Fourth. In one's interpretation of life, life 
also means religion. And what is religion? 
I ask at once. Is religion the intellectual ac- 
ceptance of certain intellectual propositions 
about God? Is religion a participation in 
certain ecclesiastical rites of high historic au- 
thority? Is religion service for man — al- 
truism? In reference to this last question — 
is religion altruism — I wish to say promptly 
and clearly that, however valuable and precious 
service for man may be, it ought not to be 
called religion. Call it philanthropy, call it 
social service, call it the expression of religion, 
but it is not to be called religion. Religion 
rather represents the relation which man holds 
to the Highest Being. That Being bears 
different names and is thought of under differ- 
ent forms. But, at all events, religion is con- 
cerned with our origin, with our passing through 
time and space, and with our destiny. It is 
the deep tide of which single events and lives 
are the individual waves. It is the atmosphere 
of which individual events are the zephyrs and 
cyclones. It is the sky, the overarching 
firmament, of which we are as clouds which 
move to and fro, fast and slow, from horizon 
to zenith. Religion gives divine movement, 
divine influence. Religion is knowing, so far 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

as may be, the infinite Force — Person. It is 
adjusting oneself to Him in peace and co- 
operation. Religion is trusting oneself to Him 
in glad hopefulness, to enable us to achieve 
results. This power, universal, eternal, make, 
so far as you can, a Person; clothe it with the 
attributes of the great Friend; think of it as 
the eternal, beneficent, living, gracious Father 
and Mother. Feel it not as a dying and a dead 
but as a living and a loving Lord. Look upon 
this world not as a charnel house of ashen 
faiths, but as a garden — a garden, not of 
Eden, with its serpent and its prohibitions, but 
as a garden of the New Jerusalem, watered by 
divine refreshings and bearing fruits for the 
healing of the nations. Give yourself unto it, 
in sentiment and mind, as a grateful worshiper 
at its altars. Of such a religion the philosophy 
taught in the college has sought to make you 
as disciples and apostles. For philosophy 
tries to see the heart of things and to inspire 
one to live according to the holiest and the 
highest. Therefore, interpret life as religion. 
What is your life? It is to be interpreted as 
truth, as growth, as service, as religion. Such 
an interpretation make an essential, necessary 
part of your character — not a superficial and 
remote part — an interpretation warm, earnest, 
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THE INTERPRETATION OF LIFE 

overflowing, vital. Add to that interpretation, 
imagination; add to that imagination, feeling, 
great, warm, lasting; add to the feeling the 
choice of your whole being. 

Thus life was interpreted by the Christ. He 
came, declaring " I am Life," and affirming 
" I am come that you might have life and have 
it more abundantly." He also affirmed " I 
am the Truth." It is said, moreover, that he 
increased in stature and in favor with God 
and man. Life was to him development and 
growth. It was also to him duty, service, 
for the second of his three great command- 
ments was to love your neighbor as yourself. 
The third of the three was to love your friends 
as he has loved you, even unto death. He 
was also the Spirit of Religion. " He that 
hath seen Me, hath seen the Father also." 
Accept the Christ as your Master, and life will 
become unto you truth and growth and duty 
and religion. 

To the Members of the Graduating Classes: 

The long wished for days have come — the 
last week of your college course is here. You 
accept of it, now that it is here, with mingled 
sadness and gladness. As you look back upon 
these four years, you do find, I trust, that 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

they have been to you an enlarging of knowl- 
edge and truth, an increasing growth in your- 
self, a stronger loyalty to duty, and a deeper 
sense of religion. If, to this quartette of 
verities, the four years have brought you into 
loving allegiance, the college has no fear for 
your future. If it has so helped you that you 
enter into that future, bearing a holier appre- 
ciation of the truth, a stronger passion for a 
full life, a more eager sense for service, a 
deeper reverence for religion, then that indeed 
which is best in the college you have gained. 
That, in this spirit, you do leave the college, 
and that also you, in this spirit, do face the 
future, I do believe. Let the noblest being 
and the best doing of the future prove how well 
you have learned the college lessons of truth, 
growth, duty, and religion. May God bless 
* you every one! Farewell! 



184 



XI 

COLLEGE LIFE A PROPHECY OF 
LIFE ITSELF 



Chapter XI 

COLLEGE LIFE A PROPHECY OF LIFE 
ITSELF 

[1914] 

"Behold: a Sower went forth to sow." — Matt, xiii: 3. 

THIS day looks at once backward and 
forward; it bears memory and hope. 
Like the treasure of the sower, it is 
both fruit and seed. Therefore it is for me to 
point out certain principles, or teachings, or 
methods, of the four years of the college, 
which are also a promise or intimation of the 
several times four years which lie before you. 

One teaching of the college, which you will 
find true of the after years, is, that you are to 
live your life. The sower sows; sowing was 
his business. He succeeded, or he failed, ac- 
cording as that life of sowing he lived. Not 
in any professional or technical sense is the 
remark to be interpreted; but in the largest 
sense, you are to live your life. Broadly, 
deeply, highly, fully, you are to live the highest, 
deepest, broadest, fullest life. Today you are 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

thinking of doing; what am I going to do next 
year? is the most common question. Beyond, 
above, below the doing, is the life that you are 
to live. You are painting your future; the 
pictures are glorious. The service you will 
render, the reform you will make, the result 
you will win, the force you will apply, the cause 
you will begin — how noble each aspiration! 
Continue to dip the brush of hope into the red 
colors of your powers, but, in preparation for 
giving your service, for creating your reforms, 
for applying your force, for winning your 
result, live your life, your life of each day, of 
each year, fully, faithfully, greatly. 

" I would be true for there are those who trust me, 
I would be pure for there are those who care, 
I would be strong for there is much to suffer, 
I would be brave for there is much to dare, 
I would be friend to all the poor and friendless, 
I would be giver and forget the gift, 
I would be humble for I know my weakness, 
1 I would look up and love and laugh and lift." 

Such a life is the vestibule of the temple of 
noblest achieving. The man who lives his 
life most effectively in his own age and place, 
is the one who is sure to make the richest 
offering to the life of all future time, and of all 
other places. It was John Milton, the poli- 
. [ 188 ] 



COLLEGE LIFE A PROPHECY 

tician, the statesman, the pamphleteer, the 
hot-headed Puritan of the great rebellion, who 
became the poet, the poet of a Paradise Lost, 
and of a Paradise Regained. 

John Hay was chosen to his greatest office 
while serving as ambassador at the English 
Court. I ventured to write him, this man of 
Cleveland, and a Trustee and benefactor of 
this University, a letter of congratulation. He 
replied to me, saying in essence: " I am a 
soldier; I can only obey my superior; I am 
coming back under orders, and I shall stand in 
my place until I fall." A true prophet he was, 
as well as a brave soldier. He did stand truly 
and bravely in his place, till he did fall. It was 
the man doing his work in this office or that, 
in England or America, which fitted him for 
the unrivaled work which he was to do as the 
Secretary of State. 

At each stage live your life just as great, 
just as complete as you can; at that stage be 
content thus to live, until the next stage of 
living is made known. 

A second principle, which the college bears, 
and which life itself will offer, and illustrate, 
is that most fundamental principle of logic and 
of science, that each result represents and in- 
cludes a cause. Every harvest looks back to a 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

sowing, every fruit to a seed. Each golden- 
wheated October pre-supposes a grain-sowing 
May: logic, commonplace and inevitable, in 
conditions material. But humanity is not so 
inclined to recognize the fact, or to appreciate 
the meaning of the fact in conditions intel- 
lectual, moral, human. 

The American people are eager for education. 
The people are to be educated. The masses 
are to be taught. These are the chief articles 
of our public educational creed, a creed inspir- 
ing, as well as aspiring. Let us accept the 
creed and practise its duties. 

But those who promulgate this creed, often 
do not understand it. They should learn, and 
believe, and they should express the belief, that 
education is not a sudden and unrelated result; 
it is not as was said of Schelling's philosophy, 
" a shot fired out of pure space." Education 
represents toil and labor, sacrifice of the lower to 
the higher, of the small to the great, of the 
transient to the lasting. One of the leaders 
of the Chautauqua movement tells me that 
apparently the American people are eager for 
what is called " culture." They want to 
know the best about the best. They desire to 
possess the virtues and the verities of learning 
and of scholarship. But he also says they seem 

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COLLEGE LIFE A PROPHECY 

to be unwilling to pay the price. They want 
to be furnished with the ready-made articles of 
intellectual habits. They desire to become 
cultured while they wait, or even without 
waiting. They want to learn while they loaf. 
They desire education in tablets. They try to 
take education, and not to be taken by it. 
The fact is that we are a good deal like our 
landscapes — new. We try to do things in- 
tellectual as we do things executive, quickly, 
immediately. Now all this is in some respects 
good and worthy. Such a process stands for 
energy, force, power; but. it does not stand for 
thoughtfulness, for enrichment, for discrimi- 
nation, for delicacy of character, or for fineness 
and beauty of service. It does not stand for 
an appreciation of the great facts of life, of 
growth, of seedtime and of harvest. Know 
you, that real life comes from life, not from 
processes; from riches of character, not from 
poverty of material. Know you that fruit 
comes from seed, and seed from fruit. They 
both represent life, and life stands for growth, 
development. Biology, as well as physics, 
illustrates the great law of cause and effect. 

A further principle, both academic and 
human, is the principle of adjustment. The 
sower went forth as a sower. He scattered 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

seeds, not iron filings. He went forth in the 
proper season. He fitted himself into his con- 
ditions. He adjusted means and methods and 
forces to ends. This lesson the college has 
tried to teach, and the same lesson life also will 
confirm. It is important for you to adjust 
yourself to circumstance. The organism is 
to adjust itself to environment. If it fail to 
adjust, it perishes. The most important part 
of all your circumstance is the human part. 
Humanity has entered into an age of asso- 
ciated action, of co-operative effort. The in- 
dividual withers. In this association, in this 
co-operation, you are to fit yourself into others. 
You are to recognize their point of view, to 
appreciate their narrowness, to feel their prej- 
udices, to interpret their selfishnesses. Al- 
truistic interpretation is to be your mood, an 
intellectual substitution your habit. 

This condition is one great cause of the prog- 
ress of German manufacturing, as a world- 
wide force. The German manufacturer puts 
up his goods in the forms which the South Sea 
Islander wishes. The Britisher is inclined to 
put up his steel and cotton goods in such forms 
as please himself, such forms as he has used for 
fifty years. The ripeness of the opportunity 
into which you would enter is important. Your 

[192] 



COLLEGE LIFE A PROPHECY 

technical, professional equipment is impor- 
tant. The forces at your command are, also, 
most important, but more important than 
any, perhaps more important than all other 
factors put together, is your power to adjust 
yourself to the human condition, is your 
capacity to work with men. Of course one is 
not blind to the personal perils of such human 
adjusting. It is the peril of losing your full, 
complete, whole selfhood. It is the peril, that 
in seeking to be all things to all men, you will 
cease to be your firmest and finest self. It is 
the peril of disintegration and dissipation, 
intellectual at least, and possibly moral. But 
avoidance of this peril may be had by the 
might and confirming power of a noble purpose. 
The apostle who writes of being all things to 
all men, affirms that his purpose is to save 
some of them. If one adjusts himself to hu- 
man factors, to gain advantage for himself 
alone, he will dissipate his personality. If he, 
however, give himself to all human conditions 
in order to improve and to better them, he will 
discover that in losing his life he has gained it; 
in losing himself, he has found himself larger 
and richer than the self lost. 

A fourth principle which the fact and the 
hour emphasize is the willingness to await 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

results. You can grind your wheat into flour 
and bake your flour into bread in a few hours. 
To grow your wheat requires many weeks. 
You have waited years for this baccalaureate 
week. You are still to be willing to wait many 
a year more for the crowning of your whole 
life. The two supreme questions now before 
the world are, in my judgment, first, the 
question of the union of races. Humanity is 
now dividing itself, more or less arbitrarily, into 
several races. Formerly these races lived 
apart. The swift, cheap and frequent trans- 
portation is bringing them together. Com- 
mercial relations promote relations social and 
inter-racial. The exporting and the importing 
of goods mean the coming and the going, and 
the staying of men. Such conditions promote 
family unions. Is it best for the progress of 
the race, that the people of the East and the 
people of the West shall intermarry? Recent 
history shows two examples of apparently good 
results. In the Hawaiian Islands the union of 
the native Hawaiian women and of the Chinese, 
and on the east central coast of Africa, the 
union of certain women of native tribes and of 
certain Arabians, seem to give evidence of the 
righteous effects of such inter-racial marriage. 
But go to India — the Eurasian — the child of 
[194] 



COLLEGE LIFE A PROPHECY 

an English father and a Hindoo mother, is 
despised by both native and foreigner. One 
may say that many factors — sociological, 
moral, personal — enter into the condition. 

But, be it said in most general terms, that 
before this tremendous problem of the separa- 
tion or the union of races, the wise man is 
willing to wait. Biology alone can give proper 
conclusions, and biology does not hasten, 
though neither does it rest. 

A second great problem of the world, that 
likewise demands patience, is the problem of 
the best and ultimate organization of society. 
Is that organization to be individualistic, or 
socialistic? Certain present evidences seem 
to indicate that it is to be socialistic. Men 
have sought, long and hard for civil liberty, and 
the advancing nations have found civil liberty. 
Men are now seeking for equality. Equality 
of opportunity, it is declared, is what they 
want. Let this seeking, which is becoming 
almost a battle, go on, and may the signs of 
victory abound. But it would seem that the 
battle is not simply for equal opportunity, but 
also for equal power; equal power of brain; 
equal power of purse; equal power of person. 
This battle, furthermore, often seems to consist 
in making equality by cutting off, by pulling 

[195] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

down, by lessening, as well as by adding, 
by multiplying, by lifting up, by broadening. 
Now, of this form of social order, there 
can be only one judgment. It is the judgment 
of condemnation; rejection by the intellect, 
despising by the heart, discarding by will, 
reprobation by the conscience. 

But a socialism which produces equality by 
enriching the poor, not by making the rich 
poor, which produces equality by broadening 
the narrow, not by narrowing the broad; 
which produces equality by deepening the 
thin, not by making thin the deep; which pro- 
duces equality by lifting up the low, not by 
lowering the high — that is a type of equality, 
of socialism, of social organization, of which 
all good men can now approve and for which all 
good men can quietly wait. 

Can quietly wait for its adjustment to the 
individualistic bases of society? Quietly wait 
— no, by no means. I would have you seek 
to understand the elements of the condition 
and to promote the adjustment of these ele- 
ments unto most efficient and long-to-be- 
waited-for conclusions. 

1 But, if, while you wait, you must work, I 
will have you willing to wait while you do 
work. 

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COLLEGE LIFE A PROPHECY 

A fifth principle is to be noted of which the 
college is prophetic of life. It is this: achieve- 
ment in the realm of character, and achieve- 
ment in the realm of service is to be yours. 
The parable whence is taken the text, con- 
cludes with saying: " Brought forth fruit 
some one hundred fold, some sixty fold, some 
thirty fold." How many fold of harvest your 
life will mean, no one, not even yourself, dares 
intimate. But I do venture to promise you 
that there shall be a harvest. You are elect 
men and women. For many a year it has been 
my joy to study students and to study the 
same men and women when they have ceased 
to be students. The qualities which made 
them worthy in the college years and within 
academic walls, have made them more worthy 
in the after college years and beyond academic 
walls. On this basis I assure you that the 
cardinal intellectual virtues of thoughtfulness, 
observation, analysis, comprehensiveness, and 
the cardinal moral virtues of love, justice, 
courage, self-restraint, and the cardinal graces 
of courtesy, generosity, graciousness, appre- 
ciation, shall bear to you results rich and far 
richer than your most daring day-dreams ever 
intimated. The world is yours, if you will be 
your best self. The sower sowed on poor soil; 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

he seemed to be intent on just sowing. I 
would not have you careless of conditions, or 
thoughtless of result, but there is a sense in 
which you should be unthinking of conse- 
quences. Be most eager for duty; to under- 
stand it and to do it. The results God will 
take care of. Be most eager for truth, to 
know it. God will take care of where it leads 
you. Be simply your broadest, deepest, high- 
est self. 

Since last we assembled in this Baccalaureate 
service, no less than six members of the Board 
of Trust of this University have died. Haydn, 
Pope, Severance, McBride, Holden, Watterson, 
names ever to be held in dear and beau- 
tiful remembrance in the annals of this Uni- 
versity. They each, in diverse ways, and under 
unlike conditions, illustrate what I have been 
trying to say. They each lived his life. They 
each recognized the truth of that old remark 
of Bishop Butler, that things will be as they 
will be. They each recognized the principle of 
adjustment of means and methods of forces to 
ultimate ends. They each were patient in 
waiting for results. They each felt assured 
that achievement and service belong to the 
good and the true. Rich contributions they 
and their children make in money to this 

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COLLEGE LIFE A PROPHECY 

University, offerings to be measured by the mil- 
lions, but richer and finer than all the material 
treasure, is their embodiment of the great 
principles of life and of being. 

Of like character and service was one whose 
name is ever to be mentioned in this University 
with grateful devotion and tender, strong 
affection, Mrs. Flora Stone Mather. As you 
entered yonder tower gateway, you may 
have seen, veiled, what you inferred was a 
piece of marble. As you pass out you shall 
see, carved by an illustrious Italian sculptor, a 
memorial statue. The gift of many loving 
friends, it incarnates our thought of her as a 
messenger of love and learning, of wisdom and 
of charity. Fitting is this place for this 
beautiful memorial, a place to the making of 
which Mrs. Mather's last work was devoted 
and which, with her sister, Mrs. John Hay, 
also of the immortals, she erected to the 
memory of their great father. From memorial 
window of the chancel and from memorial mar- 
ble of the nave, the youth, for many genera- 
tions, who daily enter this temple, shall learn 
lessons of high ideals, of generous endeavor, 
of gracious service and of holy zeal. 

Yet it is in Jesus Christ himself, that one 
finds the supreme illustration of what I have 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

tried to say. He lived his life. He went 
about teaching, preaching, doing good. His 
pure boyhood prepared him for such a life. 
He recognized that in the realm intellectual end 
spiritual, no less than in the realm material, 
causes inevitably lead to inevitable results. 
He sought through life and through death to 
adjust himself in the richest effectiveness to the 
world in which he was put. He was willing to 
await results. He recognized that his life of 
sacrifice, the supreme achievement, was to be 
of the utmost worth. He knew that ulti- 
mately he would draw all men unto himself. 
He was and is the great sower who went forth 
to sow. 

To the Members of the Graduating Classes: 

The hour of my last word to you has come. 
We look backward together; forward also, let 
us look together. Live your life, your common 
life. It is worthy. That life shall prepare 
you for the uncommon life yet more worthy. 
Expect no result in character or achievement, 
without labor. Adjust yourself to your con- 
ditions. Yet in the adjustment, find a larger, 
not a lesser, self. Be willing to wait. Live for 
eternity. Demand the highest of yourself, and 
be assured that the highest shall follow the 
[200] 



COLLEGE LIFE A PROPHECY 

demand. Such, my friends, becoming our sons 
and our daughters, are the lessons of our 
great parable. 

May the practice of these lessons be your 
daily joy and inspiration, and may the reward 
of this practice be rich to you, in all the un- 
known years. God be with you now and 
forever. Amen. 



201 



XII 

THE GREATNESS AND SIMPLICITY 
OF RELIGION 



Chapter XII 

THE GREATNESS AND SIMPLICITY OF 
RELIGION 

[1915] 

" What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, 
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? " — 
Micah vi : 8. 

WE are met in one of the college chap- 
els for the last of several hundred 
times in a service of religion. Many 
are the themes appropriate to the place and the 
hour; but out of them all I select one which 
in its comprehensiveness and definiteness 
seems not unfitting. It is drawn in particular 
from the last of the three parts of our text, and 
it is the most important: "To walk humbly 
with thy God." For if one does walk humbly 
with his God, I am sure he will do justly, for 
God is just. And if he does walk humbly 
with his God, he will love mercy. For merci- 
fulness is a property of humility. The topic, 
therefore, drawn from the lesson of walking 
humbly with one's God is the supreme one: 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

The Greatness and Simplicity of Religion in 
the Life of the Individual and of the Nation. 

And what is religion? The question be- 
comes at bottom what and who is God? For 
religion is primarily a relation to God. 

In the first verse of the massive first chapter 
of Genesis I like to stop before the first verb 
and read " In the beginning God." God a 
Person; a Person, for He has reason, conscience, 
and will. If His reason be infinitely wise, and 
if His conscience be perfect, and if His will be 
omnipotent, such infinities do not forbid His 
personality. God, the atmosphere in which we 
live and move, and have our being. God, the 
energy of which all forces are only forms and 
adaptations and applications — an energy 
which had no beginning and apparently, like- 
wise, has no end. God, the knowledge which 
is omniscience, to whom the microscopic is not 
unworthy and whose vision the telescopic 
cannot transcend. God, who was in the 
beginning and whose ending is inconceivable — 
eternal. God, who fills infinite space, as He 
fills and transmutes all time into eternity with 
His presence. God, who, being before the 
beginning, did in the beginning create; who 
came into time and who, being in space, made 
space with His creation visible. God, who as 
[206] 



THE GREATNESS OF RELIGION 

a Creator made what seemed to Him good — a 
power working for righteousness. God, the 
beneficent, who was, and is, and shall be, love. 

Yet any worthy definition is impossible, for a 
definition of God seeks to interpret the incom- 
prehensible and to make plain the infinite. 
Any God who could be defined by, or to, the 
human reason would not be God. Any human 
reason which could define God would cease to 
be a reason human. 

As God is necessary to the world, so is man's 
relation to Him, — religion, — essential. That 
relation cannot be abdicated, though it may 
be abridged. From it is no escape, no more 
than from the law of gravitation. The only 
question is, what shall that relation be? 

That relation may take one of three forms: 
It may be antagonism. The suffering, the 
inconsistencies, the sins of the world, may 
create this mood of antagonism in man. It 
may also be a relation of thoughtlessness, of 
indifference of heart, and of the will. One may 
be so absorbed in the seen, the heard, that one 
has no heed for the unseen and the eternal. It 
also may be one of trustfulness. Love, 
obedience, faith, are the keynotes of this song. 
The trust is a faith in the character of, and an 
pbedience to the willof, God. 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

In seeking to interpret the importance of 
religion one finds light in that richest field of 
human endeavor, literature. Literature as 
the noblest expression of humanity has closest 
kinship with religion, and literature we may- 
use to interpret the nature of religion. Litera- 
ture and religion spring from the same funda- 
mental sources. Religion may be defined as 
the relation which man bears to Ultimate 
Being. Religion is concerned with the sub- 
stance which lies behind phenomena and also 
with the duty of man to this Being, universal 
and eternal. It considers, too, what, whence, 
whether. Literature in its final analysis repre- 
sents the same fundamental relationship: it 
seeks to explain, to justify, to reconcile, to 
interpret, and even to comfort and to console. 
The Homeric poems are pervaded with the re- 
ligious atmosphere of wonder, of obedience to 
the eternal, and of the recognition of the 
interest of the gods in human affairs. A 
more significant place does religion hold in 
Greek tragedy. A divine providence, the 
eternity, universality and immutability of 
law, the inevitableness of penalty, and the 
assurance of reward represent great forces in 
the three chief Greek tragedians. Less im- 
pressively, yet with significance, the poems of 

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THE GREATNESS OF RELIGION 

Virgil are bathed in the air of religious mystery 
and submission. The great work of Lucretius 
is, of course, an expression of the human mind 
in its attempt to penetrate the mysteries of 
being. The mythology, too, of the nations 
of the north, as well as the literature of the 
mediaeval peoples, are concerned with the 
existence and the work of the gods. In 
Scandinavian mythology, literature and re- 
ligion are in no small degree united. 

Not only do religion and literature spring 
from the same fundamental sources; they also 
are formed by the same forces. They both 
make a constant appeal to life. They pre- 
sume the strength of the human emotions — 
fear, curiosity, reverence — and they both 
accept the categorical imperative of the 
conscience and of the will of man. Both gain 
in dominance, prestige, and usefulness as they 
are the more intimately related to life. The 
great themes of religion and literature are 
similar and are vital: sin, its origin, penalties 
and deliverance therefrom; love, the passion 
and the will, its place and its limitations; 
righteousness, and the relation of men to each 
other. In illustration of the likenesses of the 
themes of religion and literature, one may refer 
to Dante's Divine Comedy, which is con- 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

cerned with the passing into and through Hell, 
where live those who knew not Christ in the 
earthly life or, if they knew Him, refused to 
obey; through Purgatory, where dwell those 
whose sins are not mortal, and to and into 
the Paradise where dwell the righteous in an 
eternity of light and of love. The great poem 
of the Middle Ages is at once great literature 
and a certain type of religion. The whole field 
of modern fiction abounds in examples of the 
connection between literature and religion; 
Hawthorne significantly represents the more 
modern American unity of the two forces, and 
among all his works the " Scarlet Letter " and 
the " Marble Faun " are most notable in this 
respect. In English fiction George Eliot ex- 
emplifies this unity, and of her works " Adam 
Bede " is the most significant illustration. 

The teaching of the greatest poets of the last 
fifty years of any language gives forth lessons 
even more religious, and almost more impres- 
sively Christian. The poems of Browning 
embody a religion most vital and real. That 
God is a divine father, almighty and loving, 
and that Jesus Christ, his son, is our Lord, are 
doctrines which embody both statement and the 
atmosphere of Robert Browning. The Pontiff 
says in "The Pope" in an address made to God: 
[2101 



THE GREATNESS OF RELIGION 

" Our known unknown, our God revealed to man. 
Existent somewhere, somehow, as a whole; 
Here, as a whole proportioned to our sense, — 
There (which is nowhere, speech must babble thus!), 
In the absolute immensity, the whole 
Appreciable solely by Thyself, — 
Here, by the little mind of man, reduced 
To littleness that suits his faculty, 
In the degree appreciable too." 

In other passages Browning speaks of " a need, 
a trust, a yearning after God." The air is 
called the " clear, pure breath of God that 
loveth us." It is also said: 

" What is it that I hunger for but God? 
My God, my God, let me for once look on Thee 
As though nought else existed, we alone! " 

The highest voice of humanity, heard in its 
great literature, is testimony of the supreme 
importance of religion. 

Is literature great? Does it represent the 
past worthily? Does it interpret man fully? 
Does it move man deeply? If it does, then I 
say religion is great. For religion represents the 
past worthily. It interprets^man|fully. It 
moves man deeply. 

While I thus speak in general of religion, I 
refer almost unconsciously to the Christian 
faith, for it seems to gather up and to embody 
[2111 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

the worthiest in all other systems of belief. 
The Christian religion is a religion of self- 
sacrifice, but under its self-sacrifice it accepts 
the truth of renunciation, the chief article in 
the creed of millions of people, yet it supple- 
ments its renunciation by greater affirmations 
and the richest enjoyments and fulfilments 
of life. The Christian religion is a religion of 
communion, but under its doctrine of commun- 
ion it accepts that article of the great creed of 
absorption in the eternal, interpreting this 
teaching as a fellowship which, becoming 
personal, lifts, and enlarges, and enriches. 
The Christian religion is a religion of mutual 
helpfulness and reciprocity. It accepts the 
teaching of Confucianism, of reciprocity, and 
transmutes the doctrine into a love for one's 
neighbor greater than one's love for oneself. 
The Christian religion is a religion of obedience 
to law, but it accepts the teaching of Islamism 
of submission, purifying the doctrine into 
obedience to righteous commandments, which 
are summed up in the supreme commandment 
of loving God with all one's mind and one's 
heart and one's strength. The Christian faith 
gathers up out of all the past the worthiest 
of all creeds and through them offers to man 
the ultimate and supreme faith. 

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THE GREATNESS OF RELIGION 

The Christian religion gives to man a 
standard, the ultimate standard. It gives 
a standard for the intellect, to know, to 
understand, to think; a standard for the 
conscience, whose imperatives are right and 
whose judgments, though a great deep, are 
as good as they are categorical; a standard for 
the will, of the power of choice — choice of 
the true, the good, the beautiful; a standard 
for the heart, offering an object worthy of 
supreme and deathless love. Religion gives 
a standard for the race as well as for the in- 
dividual — a rule which the race, moving 
through infinite space and time, can readily 
obey, a height of attainment for which the 
race can worthily strive. The Christian faith 
gives not only a standard. It also fills up a 
lack and supplies the needs of humanity. In 
a world of movement, it gives something fixed. 
In a world of losses it offers that which cannot 
be lost. In a world of pain, it holds forth 
comfort. In a world finite, it holds out the 
infinite. In a world of sin it teaches repentance 
and pardon. In a world simply human, it 
gives the divine. 

This appeal of the greatness of religion finds 
re-enforcement in the times in which we live. 
My appeal is for you to think the broadest, 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

feel the deepest, choose the highest, — cubical 
relations all. Relations should represent re- 
ligion. But the appeal of the times is likewise 
for broadest thinking, deepest feeling, and 
highest choosing. War does contradict these 
intellectual conceptions: first, that God is the 
father of all men; second, that all men are 
brothers; third, that nature's forces are for 
beneficent uses. Yet in another sense, — an 
emotional one largely, — war does lift a 
nation. A world's civil war lifts the world 
above the mean, out of the frivolous, away from 
the petty, into the heroic, the human, the 
divine, the infinite. No one of you, though 
more than three thousand miles away from 
Belgium and Poland, can live these months 
and years and be the same men and women that 
you would ha ye been in time of quiet peace. 
To be the same would be faithlessness to the 
future and treason to humanity. It was said 
of some of our college boys who fought in the 
civil war that enlistment seemed to have 
changed them — boys into men. So this 
world's civil strife, even if you bear no rifle 
and draw no sword, has in sympathy made you 
a world-citizen, in loyalty a disciple of the 
highest, in service an apostle of the God of all 
nations, and of all men. 

[214] 



THE GREATNESS OF RELIGION 

Religion is at first personal. But if it be 
only personal, it is only partial. Religion is 
to be organized. It is to become social. It 
is to cause men to unite. Organized religion 
is called by various names: the church, the 
meeting, the congregation, the parish, the 
society. To me at this moment the names 
have no value. My chief insistence is that 
in the religious society approaching most 
closely to your intellectual and moral and 
religious sympathies you should become a 
part and a partner. That society may be 
historic, built out of memories and teachings 
and traditions reaching back thousands of 
years. It may embody annals of prophets and 
martyrs, and tales of disciples and apostles 
may form its birthright. Or, that society 
may be new, novel, simple, plain, prosaic, 
without chants, or psalms, or song. Or that 
society may be hardly an association at all, 
but a process or form of activity to help those 
men up who are down, and to help men who 
are out in the darkness and dirt and squalor 
and sin into light and laughter, into cleanliness 
and righteousness. But whatever that society 
may be, or whatever name it may bear, to 
which you feel yourself in closest affiliation — 
into that put yourself completely, thoroughly. 

[215] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

Work in it, and with it and for it and through 
it. In such a co-partnership you will multiply 
your individuality and increase your power a 
thousand times. In your belief be an in- 
dividualist. In your service be a unionist, a 
commoner. 

To the Members of the Graduating Classes: 

Tonight at least two great and high ideals 
move your souls. You would be good and 
do the right — you would make your life, like 
the city of God, four-square. You would 
be builders, not destroyers. You would be the 
worthiest. Moreover, also, you would be 
kind, gentle, and courageous, possessing hearts 
that are warm as well as thoughts that are 
high, and a good will for all, as well as a con- 
science that is keen. Truth with righteous- 
ness and righteousness with beneficence you 
would make the atmosphere and ideals of 
your character and service. Above and be- 
neath all minor and lesser ideals these two, 
truth and love, prevail. To reach these ideals 
I offer to you the force, beauty and inspiration 
of the Christian faith. That faith is the tide 
which sweeps the ship of moral struggle out into 
the deep seas of vision and of service. It is the 
river which gives life and flower and fruitage 
[2161 



THE GREATNESS OF RELIGION 

unto all the plants of your moral seed-sowing. 
It is the love which bears good into your souls. 
The future years will silently go by. As they 
go by, many details of college life will become 
obscured. But as the college years recede, the 
outlines, like the slope of far-off mountains, will 
become more clear. Friendships, atmospheres, 
tendencies will emerge. One great result — 
may it become the greatest — which I would 
have you cherish is the idea and the feeling of 
the infinite importance of your relation to your 
God, the relation of obedience, of communion, 
of gratitude, of love, and of peace. 



217] 



XIII 

THE LOOKING BACKWARD OF 

CHARACTER AND OF 

ACHIEVEMENT 



Chapter XIII 

THE LOOKING BACKWARD OF 
CHARACTER AND OF ACHIEVEMENT 

[1916] 

" That they, without us, should not be made perfect." — 
Hebrews xi : 40. 

THESE words conclude a great passage of 
memorial literature. The passage eulo- 
gizes heroes : — heroes who have sub- 
dued kingdoms, who have fought with wild 
beasts, who have endured violence and flinched 
not, who have battled with men and won, who 
have suffered persecution of fire, of sword, of 
saw, and recanted not, who have wandered 
homeless or whose homes have been in dens and 
caves, who have hungered, thirsted, been 
destitute and afflicted, and have proved them- 
selves conquerors. The passage tells of the 
pioneer, Abraham, of the statesman, Joseph, 
of the legislator, Moses, of the king who was a 
poet and of the poet who was a king, David. 
Rich was their achievement, strong their 
character, patient their endurance, lofty their 
hope, mighty the results they won. Yet, de- 

r 221 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

clares the writer, however rich their achieve- 
ment, however strong their character, however 
patient their endurance, however lofty their 
hopes, however mighty the results they won, 
their character was not perfect, their labor and 
suffering not complete, without us, living 
thousands of years after they were dead and in 
conditions unlike their own. 

Therefore the subject of the address is 
"The Looking Backward of Character and of 
Achievement" 

In its influence character is commonly sup- 
posed to relate to the future only. Achieve- 
ment of its aims and results is assumed to be 
of the next year or decade. But this writer 
declares that character looks backward and 
that achievement concerns the past. Both 
are conservative, retroactive, supplementary. 
The ship which carries lights forward also 
carries lights at its stern and they shine out 
upon the course which has been run. 

The truth of our principle receives special 
evidence in the development of modern civiliza- 
tion. Modern civilization is the resultant of 
at least four great forces, the force of religion, 
the force of beauty, the force of government, 
and the force of liberty. The force of religion 
is derived primarily from the Hebrew race. 
[222] 



LOOKING BACKWARD 

The force of beauty is derived from the 
Greek race. The force of government is de- 
rived from the Roman race, and the force of 
liberty is derived primarily from the Anglo- 
Saxon race. This quartette of forces has given 
us Western Europe and the American common- 
wealth, born of Western Europe. How slow 
has been the development, how hesitant the 
rise, how swift often the decline! What dis- 
integrating conditions overcome, what patience 
demanded, what, inspirations needed, for trans- 
muting aspirations into achievements! What 
narrowness turned to breadth, what alternation 
of desolateness and happiness, what Magna 
Chartas, besides King John's, demanded and 
granted, what commonwealths, besides Crom- 
well's, social, ecclesiastic, scholastic, as well as 
political, established and superseded! What 
funeral pyres of the brave and the true, lighting 
the advancing path of man, what ashes of the 
same pyres, cast on the river of time, drifting 
out into the sea of forgetfulness, unmourned 
and unsung! But out of these progresses and 
regresses has come what we call civilization. 
Out of these progresses and regresses has come 
our America. 

And what, be it asked, in another form, what 
has our America, our America of today, cost? 

[223] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

It has cost the learning and sacrifice, the vision 
and the faith, the patience and endeavor of ten 
generations. What has our church cost? It 
has cost tolerance in the midst of intolerance, 
faith in the midst of doubt and doubtfulness, 
trust in God in the midst of heresy, holding to 
truth in the teeth of scorn, loyalty in the face 
of shame and hatred. And what has our 
government cost? The answer is ready on 
your lips before I speak. It has cost wisdom 
and foresight, thought and will, patriotism and 
daring, life and all that life stands for, the fam- 
ily and all that the family means. In our 
liberty and union, what have they, parts of 
government, cost? Have they not cost a 
Washington, a Lincoln, a Hamilton, a Seward, 
a Hay, oceans of blood and mountains of 
treasure? 

But these are things which cannot be calcu- 
lated, and do you know how easily these costs 
could be destroyed? Do you know that 
what America has cost in education could today 
be destroyed by making education material- 
istic and sordid? Do you know that what 
America has cost in religion could today be 
destroyed by making the institutions of religion 
superfluous and unhuman, artificial and formal? 
Do you know that what America has cost in 

[2241 



LOOKING BACKWARD 

government could today be destroyed by 
making government selfish and of the classes? 
Do you know that what America has cost in 
liberty and in union could today be destroyed 
by the domination of labor unions or the in- 
stallation of class leagues and societies? But, 
affirmatively, be it said, that the civilization 
which the Mayflower brought in government 
and in church — a church which the compact 
drawn up in the Mayflower cabin stands for — 
is saved only by the sons and daughters of the 
Pilgrims believing in the God whom their fore- 
fathers worshiped, believing in the democracy 
for which their forefathers risked their all, 
believing in the simple virtues, of justice, 
hardihood, bravery, which clothed them as a 
garment. American civilization, born of Eng- 
lish, of French, of German, of Dutch, and of 
other races, and existing and nourishing for 
three hundred years, is a flower faded, a sun 
burned out, an experiment failed, unless we, its 
present exponents, defenders, promoters, prop- 
erly incarnate its strength and express its 
graces. They, the Carvers, the Bradfords, the 
Standishes, the Washingtons and the Lincolns, 
are not perfect save as we are, and as we do, 
the best. That they, without us, should not be 
made perfect. 

F225 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

Let me also ask, in a personal way, what has 
your life, up to its present hour, cost you? I 
might ask what has your life cost your home, 
or the community. But I do permit myself 
to ask a more searching question, what has 
your life cost yourself? It has cost you affec- 
tion in its first age, imagination in its second, 
and reason in its third age, an age which you 
are now beginning. By and by it will cost you 
the force and the store of memory. In affec- 
tion, your life has cost you the giving of love, 
the making of sacrifice, the daring of adventure. 
In imagination and in reason your life has cost 
you thought and anxiety, patience and waiting, 
the restlessness of ambition, the curbing of 
appetite, the suppression of temptation to 
meanness and to jealousy, the curbing of im- 
pulse and of waywardness, the loss of indul- 
gence and of pleasure. It has cost you the 
living up to high ideals and the holding of your 
mind and will to far-off things. Your life has 
cost you the new three R's of education, re- 
flection, reconsecration, reconstruction. The 
cost has been a piling up, an Ossa on Pelion, 
for a score of years. Every will you now will, 
or are to will, is to make every worthy will of 
your past more aspiring. Every affection 
you now feel, broad, and tender, is to render 

[226] 



LOOKING BACKWARD 

every affection of the past, year by year, 
broader, more tender and more controlling. 
Every ideal which you lift before yourself is to 
give a cap-stone more lofty to every past 
fundamental purpose. Every thought you 
entertain is to enlarge, to enrich, to heighten, 
every thought that has been yours in all the 
years you have lived. Every deed you do, 
every achievement you make, every victory 
you win is to give wings and power and glory to 
all the worthy thoughts and achievements and 
victories which have been yours. So also, with 
evident and painful truthfulness may it be 
added, all the unworthiness, the evils, the nar- 
rowness, the disobedience, the wrongs and the 
sins of the past take to themselves an un- 
worthiness more black, a narrowness more 
shriveling, a wrongfulness more wrong and a 
sinfulness more sinful, by your present un- 
worthiness, narrowness, wrong and sin. Like- 
wise, on the other side, the goodness of the past 
is made purer, the rightfulness of the past 
more right, the worthiness of the past more 
worthy, by your present goodness, rightfulness, 
worthiness. 

But, more and more, in a way which is at 
once regressive and progressive, my thought 
goes out. I think of those who are to follow 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

you. I think of those who are to come into 
places that you now fill. I have in mind those 
who will finally come to look upon you as you 
look back upon preceding generations. What 
are you doing, what are you to do, what are 
you being, what are you to be, or to become, 
to make it worth while for them, the followers, 
to labor and to strive to make your work and 
your character perfect? By you I do not mean 
only you who occupy these pews. I mean 
humanity. I mean our brothers and sisters 
of the race and of the races. What is man 
today doing or being to make his child 
and grandchild, in the sixth generation, feel 
that they are to complete his service and to 
enrich his achievement? We know too well 
what man is doing in some fields! But what 
can man do? What should he do and be? 

There are two things which man can and 
should do today to make his character and his 
achievement worthy of the completing and 
perfecting by those who are to follow in the 
far-off future. 

The first is that man should have and should 
be controlled by the desire and the instinct for 
leadership. The nations need leadership. Be- 
yond a few personalities, and they are very 
few, the world today has no figure of inter- 

T 228 ] 



LOOKING BACKWARD 

national preeminence. The voices are many. 
The echoes are more. The commanding per- 
sonality, where and who is he? For what does 
constitute leadership? What are the qualities 
which make a great leader? 

First, an intellectual appreciation of the 
cause in which one is to lead. This apprecia- 
tion is a sense of proportion. It is discrimi- 
nation. It embodies an understanding of 
relationships. It detects where stress is to be 
laid heavily and where emphasis is to be made 
light. It means often the giving up of the 
outlying forts of an argument or of a move- 
ment in order to defend the central fortress. 
It stands for understanding a cause and esti- 
mating the forces supporting and opposing. 

A second element is sympathy. Sympathy 
is the fellow-feeling with one's followers and a 
fellow-feeling of the followers with oneself, the 
leader. Such fellowship spells unity. Such 
was the leadership of Lincoln with the Illinois 
Whigs and Republicans in the decade before 
the Civil War. Lincoln thought their thoughts, 
felt their feelings, and they his. Although 
his power had gone far beyond the power of 
his old neighbors and friends, yet their sym- 
pathies for each other continued warm and 
deep. Sympathy means also remoteness, as 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

well as community, of fellowship. For a 
leader is to lead. He is to be the head of the 
column. Yet he is not to be so far ahead that 
the hosts cannot see his form or hear his voice. 
Leadership means sympathy born at once of 
oneness and of elevation. 

With the quality of sympathy is to be joined 
courage. Risks are found in every movement. 
These risks the leader accepts and glories over. 
Dangers abound, but these dangers the leader 
is to meet and to overcome. Courage is not 
foolhardiness. It does not mean blindness to 
peril. Neither is courage seeing the peril and 
standing dazed, without fear, before its threat. 
Courage is knowing, feeling, appreciating the 
danger, and setting one's face against it and 
making bare one's breast to its arrows. Any 
hour may give any man or woman the oppor- 
tunity for the use of courage which spells 
leadership. 

Wit and humor, too, should not be omitted 
from the list. Wit sees, humor feels, the in- 
congruities of a condition. These incongruities 
the quick tongue makes clear. Mr. Lincoln 
had both of these qualities and the great 
Secretary Hay was not wanting in them. With 
the possession of such gifts the following is 
made easier and more effective, and the guid- 

[2301 



LOOKING BACKWARD 

ance more inspiring to the guide and to the 
obeying ranks. 

A further quality is that of imaginative 
picturesqueness. The leader is if possible to be 
a picturesque figure. He is to make an appeal 
to the imagination. The merely logical seldom 
quickens the heart. The merely logical seldom 
moves the will. The song element is to be 
heard, the rhythmic element to be felt. Was 
it not the " rail-splitter " for whom many of 
the common people of the prairie voted in 
1860? Was it not the "little giant" who 
was, two years before, the antagonist on the 
stump with the same man of the axe? Was it 
not the " plumed knight " for whom many 
voted as their president, thirty years ago? 

But still one may have all these qualities 
and not be a great leader. The gift of leader- 
ship seems to be a gift. It can be analyzed 
but the thing itself may pass on beyond the 
quality of analysis. Arthur Balfour has in- 
tellectual discernment, sympathy, wit, imagi- 
nation, but he has lacked the real gift of the 
leadership of his party. 

A second thing, which humanity needs today 

to make its character and service worthy of 

the completing and perfecting of the future, 

is found in human confidence, in the confidence 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

which man has in man. It is the confidence 
of the individual in the individual. It is the 
confidence of the nation in the nations, the con- 
fidence of the race and of the other races in 
each other, the confidence of the rich in the 
poor, and of the poor in the rich, the confidence 
of the capitalist in the laborer and the laborer 
in the capitalist, the confidence of the noble 
and the great in the obscure, and of the obscure 
in the noble and the great. This confidence is 
the most precious thing. The lack of it is the 
great lack. The lack of it is the cause of 
humanity's downfall. It is to begin in the 
worthiness of confidence in the integrity of 
individual character, in the reality and in the 
incarnation of the verities and the virtues. 
It is to begin with the man, the single man, the 
one person. He is to be the best and the other 
man just as good. For such a consummation 
of confidence, no struggle is too hard, no labor 
too great, no agony too intense. It must be 
had, this confidence of man in man, if the world 
is to stand, if civilization is to go on. The 
present agony of the world is the result of the 
lack of confidence of man in man. 

The centuries are bound together, bound 
not by hoops of steel, but bound together as 
every part of our body is bound to every other 
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LOOKING BACKWARD 

part, or as the waters of the Gulf Stream are 
united with great continental currents and 
movements, by vital or co-operative relation- 
ship. The humanity of the past is a part of 
the humanity of the present, — and the present 
is a part of that which has been and also of 
that which is to be. No humanity of the 
future can become perfect unless that of the 
present transmits to it something worthy of its 
adventure, " that they without us should not 
be made perfect." 

These remarks take to themselves special 
application and significance in the beginning 
of the last decade of the first century of our 
oldest college. What men those founders 
were! What men and women have they been 
in every age! What splendor of vision, what 
coolness of daring, what strength of hope, 
what valor in privation, what endurance in 
seeing the invisible, what a re-birth of the 
heroes of the eleventh of Hebrews! They would 
be the last to describe themselves as I have 
interpreted them. But from the halls of the 
past, over which death has drawn a veil, I like 
to call out their names; of servants of the 
State, Hoadly and Woods and Taylor and Up- 
son and Williamson; of servants of the church, 
like Chamberlain, and the Scudders of India, 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

Munger, and Josiah Strong; of scholars like 
Newberry and Seymour and Young and Loomis 
and Bartlett, and of scores of others who have 
subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, 
obtained promises, who, out of weakness, 
were made strong, who waxed valiant in fight. 
Time would fail me to tell of Allen, of Bushnell, 
of Mathews, of Emerson, of Hart, of Conger, 
of Bissell, of Burton, of Barrows, of Sanders, of 
Curtis, and of hundreds of others who have 
wrought righteousness in the struggle for 
humanity. 

We are their children. Happier are our 
times, richer our circumstance, ampler our 
scholarship, finer our endowment. Is their 
work to fail? Are their bequests to be lost, 
their ideals to fall, their struggles to be van- 
quished, their past to die? Nay, is the answer. 
For our clear thinking shall confirm their 
thought; our right willing shall complete their 
holy desire; our precious aspirations and 
achievements shall transmute their endeavors 
into lasting values; our doings shall gather up 
the results of their sacrifice; and our love and 
our faithfulness, we swear it, shall take all 
they were and tried to be and all they did and 
tried to do and shall transmute their offering 
into our achievements, into our characters, 
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LOOKING BACKWARD 

which shall be as lasting as time, as rich as 
humanity, and as broad as life. 

To the Members of the Graduating Classes: 

Physicists write of the ultimate end toward 
which the universe is moving through un- 
measured space in limitless time. Where that 
goal, in the ways of space, may be, or in what 
period of time or through what processes that 
goal may be reached, they do not venture to 
prophesy. But, at some point in both space 
and time, that goal shall be reached, they do 
recognize. I think of humanity as moving 
always through unmeasured space in limitless 
time. I think of humanity at last coming to 
its goal, the goal of perfection. In what ways 
of space or what period of time that goal may 
lie or be reached, I know not. But, guided 
by education, inspired by religion, I think of 
humanity at last as coming to that goal. And 
what is that goal to be? What is to be the 
goal of religion? The knowledge of God's 
truth in this world and in the world to come, 
life everlasting. What is to be the goal of 
life? It is life most abundant. What is to be 
the goal of education? It is truth, the truth 
in terms of intellect, of heart, of will and of 
conscience. Is that goal not the goal of life 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

itself, of life everlasting, eternal, not simply in 
duration, but in the depths and heights and 
breadths of being? Such is the goal toward 
which I think of humanity as going. It is the 
goal toward which I think of you, who are 
the crown of the past, who are the beginning of 
the future of humanity, as also moving. To- 
night, as you stand, I summon you each to 
pledge yourself that, so far as lieth in you, you 
will seek to advance humanity toward this 
goal through perfecting the work of those 
who have preceded, through making worthy 
the work of those who are to follow you, in the 
glorious achieving of your work and in the 
perfecting of your own character. 



[236 



XIV 

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE 

INDIVIDUAL FOR THE 

COMMUNITY 



Chapter XIV 

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE 
INDIVIDUAL FOR THE COMMUNITY 

[1917] 

" Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." — Matthew 
xix : 19. 

THE New Testament has two chief words 
for love, agapao and phileo. The one 
used in my text is agapao. It repre- 
sents both the intellect and the heart, but the 
intellect more fully. Phileo represents both 
the intellect and the heart, but the heart 
primarily. In the intellectual act love inter- 
preted as agapao has an element of the will. 
" I will well to my neighbor " would not be a 
bad translation. This good will to my neigh- 
bor represents a certain appreciation of my 
neighbor. The emotional element is largely 
eliminated. The intellectual, the volitional 
relation of each man to his neighbor becomes 
chief and significant. 

Therefore my theme is The Responsibility of 
the Individual for the Whole Community. 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

What is a sense of responsibility for the 
community? What is a sense of responsi- 
bility of which we speak much and define 
little? Is it not akin to the sense of duty to 
others? Does not altruism embrace it, and 
more too? Does it not mean making the 
community's interests one's own affair, the 
community's sorrows one's own griefs, the com- 
munity's failures one's own defeats, the 
community's needs one's own wants, the com- 
munity's burdens weights for oneself to bear, 
the community's losses one's own losses, the 
community's shame one's own degradation, 
the community's fears one's own dreads, the 
community's hopes one's own assurances, and 
the community's glories, one's own triumphs? 
Does the phrase not represent vicariousness? 
Does it not mean substitution? Does it not 
spell incorporation with another? 

Such a sense for the community belongs to 
great souls. The community — what is the 
community? Is it your street? Yes, it is 
your street. Is it your city? Yes, it is your 
city. Is it your state? Yes, it is your state. 
Is it your nation? Yes, it is your nation. Is it 
your world? Yes, it is your world. 

Why is the world your community? Because 
the community is that with which you have 

r 2401 



INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 

certain things in common. With the world 
of the opposite zone even you have many 
things in common. The world is tied up to- 
gether, many articles, in the same, and a small, 
parcel. The world is like a globe of water. 
Pressure at one point affects the whole. War's 
declaration in Europe means unrest in India, 
the amount of gold mined in this country, the 
doubling of the price of nitre in Chile, the 
tripling of the cost of potatoes in Northern 
Maine. The whole world seems like the human 
body. A pain in one part is felt in the whole. 
The world is organic. It is one, — one out of 
many, yet one, — one in many, one going out 
to many, yet one. The world seems almost 
like a person, so complete is it, so necessary 
part to part. 

It is to train men and women to understand 
this sense of responsibility of the individual 
for all and to undertake the service which this 
sense embodies, that the college and university 
exist. Many elements can be named which 
represent the purpose of an academic founda- 
tion. You have often heard them from me. 
I shall not now repeat. But beyond and above 
the selfward purpose of culture, including the 
mission of the extension of the field of knowl- 
edge, including also the sharpening of the 

[2411 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

knife of the mind and increasing its cutting 
power, embracing the giving to character 
weight and dignity, beyond and above intel- 
lectual freedom and creative activity and 
capacity, is the higher, deeper, broader purpose 
of the development and the use of this sense of 
responsibility for all people. 

There are several fields to which this con- 
structive sense of responsibility, which the 
college represents, may be applied. Of course 
one feels that one field is education itself. 
Education has come to be regarded as the 
most important of all agencies for the welfare 
of the nation. Every grade, and kind, and 
order, of education at times seems to me the 
most important. The lower grades are the 
most important, for most folks never get be- 
yond them. The common studies are the most 
important, for all persons use them. But 
really the most important order of education is 
the college. For from the college comes the 
teacher, and the teacher makes the class. 
From the college comes the leader, and the 
leader makes the school. Who are the men 
who have had the greatest influence over 
American education? What are the strongest 
forces, who the inspiring personalities of 
American education, of the last threescore 

[242] 



INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 

years and ten? Are they not Horace Mann, 
William T. Harris and Charles W. Eliot? 
Horace Mann reformed the public school 
system of Massachusetts. William T. Harris 
inspired the teachers throughout this country 
unto the highest ideals. Eliot gave to educa- 
tion freedom in method, as well as fullness in 
content. It was Brown and Yale and Harvard 
that helped to give these leaders and teachers 
to American education and to American life. 
The vagaries found in education — and they 
are many — the short cuts proposed in educa- 
tion — and they are not a few — the reforms 
which are urged in education, patent educa- 
tional medicines, educational nostrums, have 
not come from the colleges. In these silly 
affairs of the schools the higher education has 
had little or no place. The college feels the 
responsibility for raising men and women unto 
the nth power of their ability by those great 
processes of orderly disciplines, of truth- 
seeking endeavors, of personal influence, which 
do, and must, remain permanent and normal 
in the midst of the transient and abnormal 
changes of the day and of the hour. The 
college does feel its responsibility for the whole 
system of the education of the people. 
The college, further, recognizes its responsi- 

[243 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

bility in the service which it gives in the crea- 
tion of the home. The maker of the home is 
a woman, and every woman makes a home. 
She may be a wife, or not, a mother, or not, 
a sister, or not. But she is a daughter, and 
probably other. At least in one relation she 
makes a home. The home is now beset by 
many foes, some open and some insidious. 
The dissipations of life, quite as much intel- 
lectual as moral, dry up its stream of affection. 
The absorptions of life consume its proper 
interests. Narrowness of vision and of work 
robs it of its treasures of imagination. Weari- 
ness of life's common tasks exhausts its springs 
of strength. The trivialities, which surround 
its daily progress, becloud the glories of its 
conquests of the lasting and the great. Now a 
college like ours is to educate women to be the 
heads and the hearts of homes. For the col- 
lege creates interests. It develops resources. 
It gives breadth without thinness, depth with- 
out narrowness, height without remoteness. 
It grows the wings of imagination. It trans- 
mutes the commonplace into dignities and 
grandeurs and glories. It helps to make every 
cradle a Bethlehem manger, and every humble 
path of duty a way to heaven and to God. The 
college aids in making such homes, and when 
[244] 



INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 

such homes are made, the earth becomes a * 
heaven. 

The college also feels its responsibility for the 
proper conduct of business, industrial, mer- 
cantile. What is business? It is the making 
and interchange of commodities. What is 
the most important element in business? The 
human. Who is the best business man? The 
man of vision, foresight, prudence, of integrity, 
of soundness of judgment, of courage, of 
initiative, of outlook, of co-operation, of wide 
and definite knowledge, of inspiration, of 
patience, of good manners. What are these 
but the qualities which the college is training 
every day and every year? The college calls 
you to look ahead, to be sound in conscience, 
to be exact in thinking and in statement. 
Student life develops energy, evokes initiative. ' 
It calls out co-operation. It requires patience 
in labor, respect for others, and the essence of 
good manners in all its doings. College does 
not train you to be merchants or manufac- 
turers. But it seeks to train you into character 
of a type out of which are made the ablest 
manufacturers and the best buyers and sellers 
of all commodities. The college feels and 
seeks to use its sense of responsibility for p 
you. 

[245 1 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

The college also tries to develop a sense of 
responsibility for the making of that great 
power called the newspaper. The newspaper 
is a picture of the world, an interpretation 
of humanity and of nature. In this world are 
numberless forces of action, constant or in- 
frequent, of power, strong or slight, of im- 
portance, great or small. The newspaper is to 
present the action, the interaction, the play and 
the inter-play and the by-play. It daily 
paints a picture and tells a story, prints a 
report or publishes an interview. As the pic- 
ture is painted truthfully, as the story is told 
with interest and fair proportion, as a report 
reflects what humanity should know, as the 
interpretation offers what humanity should 
understand, the journal is great or not great. 
Behind it all stands a man, or a body of men. 
If they are truthful, honest, just, lovers of their 
kind, leaders of great causes, the resulting 
journal will embody these same great elements. 
To make men truthful and honest and earnest, 
to inspire them to be lovers of their kind, to 
make men leaders in great causes, the college 
is founded. Select the most important, the 
most representative journals of the life in 
America today, and it will be found that the 
leaders and makers of them are graduates of the 

[246] 



INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 

American college. When Mr. Godkin was 
retiring from the editorship of The Nation 
after a service of thirty-three years, James 
Bryce wrote to him, saying: 

Still do I regret it terribly, for there is 
no one in the U. S. A. that one has heard of 
who can do the tithe of what you have done for 
principles of good government and purity and 
for sound reason as against demagogism." 

When Wendell Phillips Garrison was retiring 
after forty years of service on the same journal, 
Henry W. Longfellow, Lowell, Goldwin Smith, 
Professor Gilman, Phillips Brooks, and others, 
wrote to him, saying: 

" To have directed for forty years, with such 
zeal and taste and lofty ideals, a journal re- 
flecting the finest scholarship and the soundest 
public morals of America, is an achievement 
without parallel in our literary annals." 

Such leaders were trained in the college. 
The list of names of your own elder brothers 
who hold high places in journalism would be 
a noble one. 

To one further field do I refer, which illus- 
trates the function of training men unto a 
sense of corporate responsibility. It is religion. 
Religion represents responsibility for most 
serious communal interests. Religion stands 

[247] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

for the incarnation of the Divine Being. It 
represents God on the earth. It gives inti- 
mations of the infinite, the eternal, the univer- 
sal. It spells the over-soul. It stands for 
that spirit in man which differentiates him both 
from things and from brutes. Religion takes 
on the divine forms of truth, of duty, of wid- 
est, highest relations. It calls to its service 
prophets who proclaim its truths, priests who 
minister at its altars, scholars who read and 
interpret its holy books. The progress of pure 
religion means the progress of the community. 
The regress of pure religion means the declining 
of the community. The college gives itself to 
the education of men who shall be prophets 
true, priests devout and devoted, scholars 
wise. It realizes that, if the oracles be dumb, 
if the priesthood be corrupt, if the altar-fires 
are impure, or the scripture false, the whole 
community suffers in the degradation of 
mind, of conscience, of conduct, and of life. 
It recognizes that if it can have a share in the 
education of the saints and prophets, it is 
giving a sky to the life of the community, a 
sense of infinity in the midst of its minute 
finites, and a God to a world living the lust of 
the flesh and of the eyes. 

To these, and to all other forms of the com- 

[248 1 



INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 

munal life and interest, such as government, 
the professions, the fine arts of literature, of 
painting, of architecture, of music, the college 
gives itself as it feels its responsibility. It 
feels its responsibility in the training of men 
and of women. 

In this training of individuals for every 
department and field the college offers certain 
uniting and integrating forces. The college 
seeks to give to men and women of all callings 
and forms of endeavor at least three condi- 
tions. First, it seeks to accumulate resources 
in each. Civilization is measured by its 
treasure of results achieved and saved. Sav- 
agery does not accumulate. It spends daily 
or yearly what it makes daily or yearly. The 
college tries to train students unto the force of 
accumulating the results of the past. It 
gathers up the former generations for the pres- 
ent and transmutes those results unto the 
future. It makes this collegian a citizen of all 
the past and of all nations, a resident of every 
zone, at home with all men of all time. It 
gives, in a word, resources. 

To the college woman, in particular, the duty 
of the college in giving resources becomes in 
these times specially urgent. For it grows in- 
creasingly clear that the public service of wo- 

[249] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

men is to be more and more needed in this 
old world of ours. The granting of suffrage 
represents a field of this service. But it is a 
token also of the opening of other fields. For 
entrance into such fields women know they are 
to be abundantly fitted. Failure cannot for 
an instant be thought of. Success in the en- 
deavor is to be won, and it is to be recognized 
that success can be won only through the pos- 
session of proper resources. 

Second, the college seeks to create a sense 
of the unities of life and of all being. It 
endeavors to show the penetrations and the in- 
terpenetrations which belong to forces, states, 
conditions, causes, and results. It labors to 
make it plain that nothing is alone, that all 
is in all and that each is in each, that all is 
in each and each in all. It abolishes the doc- 
trine of aloneness and aloofness. It stands 
for the social and the communal. 

Third, the college also desires to show that 
life is a process — more a becoming than a 
become. The college tries to conjugate life 
rather in the imperfect than the perfect tense, 
rather in the future than in the past. It tries 
to prove that aspiration is more important than 
achievement, and that achievment which is 
not the parent of further achievement is failure. 

[250] 



INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 

It tries to prove that any victory which does 
not lead to further advance of the forces of 
truth and of righteousness is really a defeat. 
Its heavens show the morning star, and its 
suns are ever rising toward a zenith which is 
never reached. 

By what method does the college give to 
its students, who become its sons and daughters, 
this tremendous sense of co-operative respon- 
sibility? 

In answer be it remembered that the college 
accepts these students as boys and girls, at a 
beautiful and critical time in their normal 
development. The age of memory is beginning 
to lose its keen avariciousness. The age of 
intellectual imagination dawns; it feels the 
growth of wings. The age of reasoning is 
taking its first and longer steps. It is an age 
of in-looking, of expressing, of out-looking, of 
observing. It is an age of interpretation. It 
is a time when, in the verse of Wordsworth, 
one is " moving about in worlds not realized." 
It is a creative age. The new worlds are 
being formed, and of each of them, both night 
and day, one can say, as in the first of Genesis, 
" It is good." It is of tremendous worth that 
the college receives the girl or boy as a youth. 
The college gateway is the gateway of youth. 
[251] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

When the college has received this student 
there are at least three ways which the college 
may employ in developing this sense of com- 
munal responsibility. One way is the way of 
truth. The college seeks to aid this mind to 
know, to know things, processes, causes, re- 
sults in time and space. The college seeks to 
help one to interpret all phenomena and above 
all to see phenomena in their relations. Seeing 
things in their relations is truthful truth. See- 
ing things out of their relations is untruthful 
truth. Among such fundamental truths is the 
fact that all men and all movements are vitally 
associated. No man liveth to himself: no 
man dieth to himself. When the student 
comes to realize that his individual unity is 
simplest, and that the unity of the community 
is of unspeakably more importance, he has 
taken the first step in the understanding of 
his responsibility. Such realization does be- 
come his. The coming of the sense of such a 
responsibility is an intellectual new birth. 
It represents wisdom. The knowing the truth 
is knowledge. The knowing truth truthfully 
is wisdom. Knowledge is the steel and timber 
assembled for the building of the ship. Wis- 
dom is the putting of part to part and the mak- 
ing of this greyhound of the ocean. Knowledge 

[252] 



INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 

is stone in the quarry. Wisdom is the laying 
of block upon block into the house of character, 
of beauty, of rest and service. Knowledge is 
the wheat in the granary, rich and golden. 
Wisdom is the grinding of the wheat into flour 
for the feeding of the multitude. Knowledge 
is the theory of civil and political service. 
Wisdom is taking that theory and using it for 
government, honest, helpful, democratic, and 
effective. 

But seeing truth truthfully is only the first 
step. The student is to come to recognize 
the oughtness of this communal responsibility 
and relationship. He is to appreciate the duty 
which moves him in relation to his fellows. 
The work which the college may do in this 
condition is a difficult one. For it is said that 
the college is an intellectual agency. How 
can the college cause a student to translate a 
revelation into a dedication? The answer is 
still a difficult one and also direct. It is by 
thinking, thinking, thinking, on the needs of 
the world which surrounds him and of which 
he is an integral part. No one can reflect on 
the wants and the woes of today, soberly and 
continuously, without a tremendous will that 
he ought and that he will do all he can to fill 
those wants, to remove those woes, to ennoble 

[2S3] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

all conditions. In a stone of one of the older 
buildings at the English Harrow are cut these 
words, " Near this spot as a young boy stood 
Anthony Ashley Cooper, in the year 1814, and 
saw for the first time a pauper funeral." He 
was so moved thereby that he determined to 
give his life unto the helping of the suffering 
poor of England. In the year 1885, the same 
boy become a man, and known as the Seventh 
Earl of Shaftesbury, died at the age of eighty- 
four, died after a life spent in carrying out the 
boyhood pledge, and died saying, " Must I die 
and leave all this suffering in the world? " 
Every school and every college train unto this 
sense of responsibility by seeing and re- 
flecting. 

This same condition of thinking also gives 
a further aid. It both quickens the feelings 
and moves the will. " While I was musing, 
the fire burned, then spake I." It is for such 
thinking and its influence on both the heart and 
the will that I plead. Get knowledge, get 
truth, get fact, get information, get all. But 
with all your getting, get understanding. 
With all your getting, get reflection, get 
meditation, get consideration, get interpre- 
tation, get understanding of the things great 
and greatest, of all things encyclopaedic, get 
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INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 

it as a habit, get it as a mood. Good is it in 
itself and good also is it as means of moving 
the heart, of quickening the conscience, of in- 
fluencing the will, of forming the character, 
wholesome, holiest, best. Thus the college 
may be true to its intellectual mission and also 
be true to its duty, too, in educating men and 
women who are bound by a mighty sense of 
responsibility to and for the whole com- 
munity. 

Such a life of responsibility is worth living, 
either as a memory, as a hope, or as a present 
duty. No other life is so well worth living. 
It is a life which the new master of Eton has 
put into verse as an elegy of one of the thou- 
sands of schoolmen who have fallen in the 
great war. This master writes of his boy in 
almost dialect lines: 

"To have laughed and talked, — wise, witty, fantastic, 

feckless, — 

To have mocked at rules and rulers and learnt to obey, 

To have led your men with a daring adored and reckless, 

To have struck your blow for Freedom, the old straight 

way: 

" To have hated the world and lived among those who 
love it, 
To have thought great thoughts, and lived till you 
knew them true, 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

To have loved men more than yourself and have died to 
prove it, — 
Yes, Charles, this is to have lived: was there more to 
do?" 



To the Members of the Graduating Class: 

You who here stand together realize this 
sense of responsibility of the individual for the 
community more keenly, more deeply, than 
have the members of any other class who have 
stood together, for many a Commencement. 
Memorial halls, memorial alcoves in libraries, 
memorial volumes, are testimony of that sense 
felt in the Civil War. Women's colleges in 
Oxford and Cambridge converted into hos- 
pitals, with women students as nurses, the 
nurse's gown supplanting the academic robe, 
the lonely grounds of Magdalen and Oriel, 
and the lonely and lovely gardens of New 
College, the waters of the Cam unflecked 
by oar, are evidences of the sense of responsi- 
bility for a free world felt by the men and women 
students of the older England. A like, though 
not the same, condition is yours. You do 
know and you do feel the responsibility which 
falls on you. In what special field you may 
exercise this responsibility, neither you nor 
I at this moment know. Neither do we seri- 
[256] 



INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 

ously care. But we do know and care that 
wherever you shall be, whatever path you 
may walk, under whatever sun you may daily 
labor, under whatever star you may pitch 
your nightly tent, you will recognize yourself 
as a trustee for the whole community. Trea- 
sure your powers as a resource for the race and 
the races, holding the cup of the water of your 
life as strength and refreshment for all. Your 
mind is a mind for all: your will is a good will 
for all, your heart is a heart for all. To such a 
quest I need not call you. To such a quest 
your whole life calls you and will ever call. Of 
your obedience to such summons I am con- 
fident. I pray, now and ever, for full strength 
for you each in your obedience. 



[257] 



XV 

EFFECTS OF THE WAR ON 
COLLEGE WOMEN 



Chapter XV 

EFFECTS OF THE WAR ON COLLEGE 
WOMEN 

[1918] 

" Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and 
his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary 
Magdalene." — John xix : 25. 

" Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she 
had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things 
unto her." — John xx : 18. 

IN these days every soul is seeing visions. 
In these nights every soul is dreaming 
dreams. No soul is more keen in seeing 
visions or more alert in dreaming dreams than 
the soul of the college woman. Her spirit 
goes out into all this war-torn earth, and all 
the war-torn earth beats back upon, and into, 
her responsive spirit. 

What, therefore, are the effects of this war 
upon her? That is the question which I shall 
try to answer. 

First. One effect is the giving of an in- 
creased sense of the unity of all human life. 
Books are written and arguments are offered 
upon the differences that divide men. The 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

white race, the black, the yellow, the brown, are 
distinctions which are made emphatic. There 
is said to be a brain Caucasian, a brain Mon- 
golian, and a brain African. The civilization 
of the orient and the civilization of the Occident 
are interpreted as distinct and different con- 
ditions and forces. For 

" East is east, and west is west, 
And ne'er the twain shall meet." 

Yet in these years, we are learning that, if 
there are races, there is also, and more, one 
race, — the human, and that if there are several 
social classes, there is also, and more, one social 
class, — the human. We are discovering that, 
if " east is east, and west is west," if one go 
far enough east, he will find himself in the 
west, and also that the farther west one travels, 
the nearer he approaches the east. Men are, 
in fact, united — united by the pursuit of one 
ideal, the ideal of democracy. Men are 
united by one ideal — humanity itself as it 
struggles against the fell purposes of narrow 
autocracy. The horrors indeed have joined all 
peoples together, except those peoples who com- 
mit the horrors or who warm themselves by the 
fire of selfish ambition while the horrors are 
being committed. Dangers unite. Sinking 

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THE WAR AND COLLEGE WOMEN 

steamers make all passengers one. Lifeboats 
do not stand for civic discriminations. The 
recognition of a common origin unites: "God 
hath made of one blood all nations of men." 
A common atmosphere unites: we are not 
" strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens. " 
A common battle and one campaign unite: we 
all march to the strains of the Battle Hymn 
of the Republic of man. A common agony 
and loss unite. The door posts of thousands 
of homes, cottage and palace, bear, or are to 
bear, the finger-prints of blood. As a French 
nurse said to a friend of mine, speaking of the 
German bombing of hospitals, " All wounded 
men are brothers! " A common destiny 
unites: the government of and for and by the 
people is to be saved and perpetuated. " There 
is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond 
nor free, there is neither male nor female: for 
ye are all one in Christ Jesus." 

In the year 1871, Bismarck, maddened by 
the French resistance, said, " We shall shoot, 
hang, and burn. After that has happened a 
few times, the inhabitants will finally come 
to their senses." Against such a policy, all 
men are joined. Every German pastor takes 
this solemn oath: " I will be submissive, 
faithful, and obedient to his Royal Majesty, — 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

and his lawful successors in the government, 
— as my most gracious King and sovereign; 
promote his welfare according to my ability; 
prevent injury and detriment to him; and 
particularly endeavor carefully to cultivate in 
the minds of the people under my care a sense 
of reverence and fidelity toward the King, 
love for the Fatherland, obedience to the laws, 
and all those virtues which in a Christian denote 
a good citizen; and I will not suffer any man 
to teach or act in a contrary spirit. In par- 
ticular, I vow that I will not support any 
society or association, either at home or 
abroad, which might endanger the public 
security, and will inform His Majesty of any 
proposals made, either in my diocese or else- 
where, which might prove injurious to the 
state. I will preach the word as His Gracious 
Majesty dictates." Against such autocracy 
and such submissiveness, all people are united. 
Such differences give to the independent, 
self-respecting mind and will of the college 
woman, by sheer contrast, a sense of the unity 
of all worthy peoples. Such a sense of unity 
belongs especially to the college women of this 
America of ours which has, for decades, been a 
leader and guide in the higher education of 
women. 

[264] 



THE WAR AND COLLEGE WOMEN 

Second. The war also creates a sense of 
directness in thinking and in interpretation. 
War wipes out the superfluous. On battle 
fields baggage trains are few and short, muni- 
tion trains many, long, heavy. Thinking in 
war time is rather tangential than circular. 
War writes commands. It gives orders. It 
does not offer intimations or suggestions. To 
see clearly, to think straight, is the method. 
Diplomacy palavers and parleys, and bar- 
gains, and delays, and lingers: — war strikes 
and it strikes hard. The belligerent mood 
and method affect the college mind. Mental 
discursiveness is narrowed, intellectual luxu- 
riousness abolished. The method of interpre- 
tation becomes simpler. Contrast the style of 
Henry James and the style of a good war 
correspondent. Involutions and evolutions, 
nouns which have no verbs, and verbs without 
nouns, participles which have no relatives, 
thrown into a formless linguistic ether, clauses 
flung about like stars in some endless milky 
way, thoughts which are feelings, and feelings 
which darken thoughts, — contrast such a 
style with the direct progressiveness and orderly 
interpretativeness of the writing of a good 
correspondent from the battle front. Such is 
the contrast between the thinking of the older 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

time of academic analysis and of this day, of 
the Red Cross work, the Liberty Loan, and 
of War Savings Stamps. 

Third. It also seems to me that a further 
effect of the war on the college woman is to 
give strength to her right of individual choice 
in essential concerns and to enlarge the field in 
which her right may properly be exercised. 
One of the most impressive and significant re- 
marks of any social philosopher of modern 
times lies in the simple sentence of Sir Henry 
Sumner Maine in which he says that " The 
movement of the progressive societies has hith- 
erto been a movement from status to contract." 
It is a succinct interpretation of the method of 
content of social progress. It means the casting 
off of a condition fixed by birth or by environ- 
ment and the putting in its place a condition 
which is under one's own control. It represents 
a passing from a determination made by others 
to a determination made by oneself. Of 
course these last decades form the period of 
this greatest change. But the war has given 
special speed to the change. The war has 
called upon the individual to do his own best 
and in his own best way. It has mobilized all 
forces, personal as well as communal. If it 
has increased duties, as it has, it has also multi- 

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THE WAR AND COLLEGE WOMEN 

plied rights. The calls to service are no longer 
given alone at the teacher's desk, or at the 
marriage altar. They are also given by 
business, by social service, by professional and 
other vocations. The demand for human 
power without regard to sex has created for 
college women the right of choice. The elec- 
tive system of studies has prepared the way 
to the elective system of works. Such a 
change has tremendous meanings for you and 
meanings equally tremendous for the effective- 
ness of all human service. 

Fourth. Yet a more important effect of the. 
war on college women is what I shall call an 
increased sense of trusteeship. For whom is 
the college woman a trustee? For humanity. 
What does the college woman hold in trust? 
The future of the race. What does she possess 
that makes her worthy of being a trustee? 
She has manner, or manners, which make her 
at home in any society. Her knowledge is not 
en masse, but is articulate and orderly. Her 
disciplined thinking, though clear and close, is 
yet rich without ornateness; logical in argu- 
ment, persuasive in reasoning, yet apt in illus- 
tration. Her heart tender without gushing- 
ness, aspiring without visionariness, broad in 
sympathy without being thin or artificial, 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

swift without hurry, delicate without over- 
refinement, her love of the beautiful inspiring 
without being fantastic, her convictions keen 
to detect the right and the wrong, yet free from 
casuistry, rejoicing in the right seen and 
chosen, persistent without stubbornness, and 
firm without obstinacy, gracious without 
obsequiousness, generous and yet self-respectful 
— she has, in a word, her whole strong, dis- 
ciplined womanhood to make her the best 
trustee for humanity. She " suffereth long 
and is kind." She " envieth not"; she 
" vaunteth not " herself, " is not puffed up "; 
" doth not behave " herself " unseemly, seeketh 
not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh 
no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth 
in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all 
things, hopeth all things, undureth all things." 
She " never faileth." These are some of the 
things which make the college woman worthy 
of being a trustee for the future of the race. 
Does she know the elements of her trustee- 
ship? Does she feel the significance of this 
trusteeship? Does she realize the impres- 
siveness of it? Thousands of students, tens 
of thousands of graduates, give answer with 
bowed heads and with trembling, speech- 
less lips. 

[268] 



THE WAR AND COLLEGE WOMEN 

Fifth. Yet another result of the war on the 
soul of the college woman of America is found 
in an enriched appreciation of religion. It is 
not a formal religion which is the more deeply 
respected in this crisis. It is not a faith spelled 
in the alphabet of ecclesiastical denominational- 
ism, or which is stated in the articles of the 
creeds. It is rather a religion as simple as it is 
real. It is a religion which has for its chief and 
central constructive truth, the idea of God. 
The idea of God is the chief constructive truth 
in the intellectual interpretation of faith. The 
idea of God is the chief idea found in the 
Hebrew system, whether it is expressed in 
the Ten Commandments or in the requirements 
of Micah's sententious imperative of doing jus- 
tice, loving mercy, and walking humbly. It is 
also the constructive motive in the Beatitudes 
of Christ, and the first and controlling force in 
His commandment of loving God supremely. 
The Christian faith is a simple faith in its ele- 
ments, as it is a real faith in its power over the 
human character. The war has abolished the 
accidents and incidents of the thinking of 
the college student about the divine and the 
eternal and has brought him face to face with 
the central, constructive, substantial, facts. 
I do not believe it is true that in religion, as 
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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

Tennyson once said, one must choose between 
bigotry or flabbiness. One can and does 
believe strongly in the fundamentals. Face to 
face with death, he thinks of the eternal. 
Alone, separated from ordinary associates and 
associations, he is touched by the presence of 
the great Companion. 

How unlike such a conception of religion is 
that which is found in certain of the older 
systems of theology which are designed to in- 
terpret religion. I turn, for instance, to 
Dwight's Theology, bound up in five volumes, 
and I at once read of the doctrines regarding 
God, — the existence of God, the unity of 
God, the attributes of God, the decrees of God, 
the sovereignty of God, the works of God as 
seen in his creation and in His providence, and 
the providence of God as seen in the depravity 
of man, its universality, its degree, its pre- 
vention; and all this set forth in some thirty- 
four sermons, and the thirty-four sermons 
being less than one-quarter of the one hundred 
and seventy-three sermons which represent the 
whole system. These sermons were first 
preached to college students. The war has 
done away with such elaborate expositions and 
interpretations of religion. 

This emphasis upon simplicity seems to have 

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THE WAR AND COLLEGE WOMEN 

a certain application to what may be called a 
belief in the eternal and beneficent purpose of 
God in human affairs. The undergraduate 
mind, like every other mind, is now bewildered. 
What does it behold ? In a universe of orderli- 
ness, of law, it sees disorder and lawlessness. 
In a universe designed apparently for love and 
for beneficence, it beholds hatred and evil 
working. In a universe planned for material 
growth and development, it beholds premature 
loss and destruction. In a universe ordained 
to create happiness and satisfaction, it finds 
misery, pain, suffering, woe. In a universe 
in which righteous omnipotence is supposed 
to rule, it sees abominable evil rampant, and 
often triumphant. In such a state the mind 
of the student is bewildered, as his heart is 
stirred and his will partially atrophied. 
And yet, as he reflects on these contradic- 
tions, I believe he comes somewhat to per- 
ceive and to believe in the purpose of God, 
righteous and eternal, hidden in these things. 
If there be a God at all — and the student 
cannot give up this assurance — there must be 
something good to come out of this evil. He 
hears Tennyson's " Two Voices," and Whit- 
tier's " My Soul and I," and he must believe 
that, jf the universe be not devilish in origin 
[2711 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

and demoniac in agency and hellish in destiny, 
beneath these present evils there must be the 
soul of righteousness and of goodness. 

The religion which is worthy of the college 
woman is therefore broad in its outlines. It 
represents the common denominator of at 
least five historic faiths which are chiefly 
affected in this crisis, the Protestant, the 
Jewish, the Roman Catholic, the Greek 
Catholic, and the Nestorian. But the com- 
mon denominator is a belief in one God, 
God the Father, Maker of heaven and 
earth. 

Sixth. A still further result of the war upon 
the college woman, and the last which I shall 
name, lies in the intensifying of moral passion. 
Moral passion is moral sentiment sharpened to 
a cutting edge. It is feeling devoted to 
ethical ends. It is ambition raised to the 
power of highest beneficence. It is sentiment 
touched with a sense of righteousness, quick- 
ened by a sense of wrong suffered, and moving 
toward results lying in the realm of character. 
It is often the result of moral purity incarnated, 
and it quite as often aims toward banishing 
the moral outcast and criminal. The un- 
speakable things which have been done in this 
war, which I shall not harrow you by repeating, 
[272 1 



THE WAR AND COLLEGE WOMEN 

make an equally unspeakable appeal to the 
heart of the college woman. She appreciates 
the enormity of these horrors. She under- 
stands — although no one can understand 
fully — how far these horrors transcend and 
transgress all the laws of war and of moral 
codes. She feels their terribleness, for she 
knows the hearts of her sisters who suffer in 
degradation. Her passion she declines to tear 
and to relieve its depths in mad ravings. She 
prefers rather to re-affirm the categorical im- 
perative of Immanuel Kant, and she feels the 
degradation of a nation which has forgotten 
him, or which, remembering him, can still 
believe that his " I ought " leads to Belgian, 
Polish, Serbian, and Roumanian atrocities. 
She has God as moderator in her worthy hates. 
But she feels the moral passion to the depths of 
her soul, and she would wipe from the world 
such horrors with the full floodtide of penitence 
and righteousness. Her thoughts and her 
feelings of horror for the past and of hope for 
the future are well expressed in that glorious 
sonnet of Rupert Brooke: 

" Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! 

There's none of these so lonely and poor of old, 
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold. 
These laid the world away; poured out the red, 

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THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be 
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene, 
That men call age; and those who would have been, 

Their sons, they gave, their immortality. 

" Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth, 
Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain. 

Honour has come back, as a king, to earth, 
And paid his subjects with a royal wage; 

And Nobleness walks in our ways again; 
And we have come into our heritage." 

These great results of the effects of the war 
on college women — an increased sense of the 
unity of all human life, a sense of directness 
in thinking and in interpretation, a sense of 
strength in the right of individual choice in 
essential concerns and an enlargement of the 
field in which this right may be exercised, an 
increased sense of trusteeship, an enriched 
appreciation of religion, and an intenser 
moral passion — are in these times achieved in 
a new world in which two great political and 
social movements are also going forward toward 
a worthy conclusion. I refer first to the move- 
ment for prohibition. Intemperance is one 
of the direst of all enemies of the human race. 
It breaks the laws of economics: it is waste. It 
breaks the law of hygiene: it is destructive 
of fibre. It breaks the laws of morals; it 
[274] 



THE WAR AND COLLEGE WOMEN 

whets the appetite to sin. It breaks the laws 
of the State: it is the direct, or indirect, cause 
of four-fifths of all crimes. It hurts the home of 
which woman is the heart. Intemperance 
will not be wholly cast out by statute, but 
some of its worst results will be wiped out. 
Women will be the chief beneficiary of this 
tremendous social betterment. A second 
movement refers to the giving of the vote to 
women. This cause has been progressing 
while this war has been waging. In England, 
— that most conservative nation, — the grant 
has been made in no small part as the result of, 
or as the condition of, the great conduct of 
women in the war. This grant is sure to come 
in every American commonwealth. The pro- 
hibition movement and the suffrage movement 
are at once cause and result. The prohibition 
of the liquor traffic has given clearer vision for 
seeing, and stronger will for doing, civic duty, 
and the clearer vision and the stronger will 
have given ample power for wiping out the 
base traffic in intoxicants. 

It is not a little significant that while the 
soul of the college women is touched by the 
great results to which I have alluded, these 
two fundamental social and civil enlargements 
have been going forward. 

[275] 



THE COLLEGE GATEWAY 

To the Members of the Graduating Class: 

My sermon is done. The Marys of our 
texts still stand in the shadow of the cross. 
Women are still standing in millions of homes 
and are thinking of their beloved, or kneeling 
in prayer for the preservation of their husbands 
and sons, and brothers, or for the comfort of 
their own broken hearts. But the Marys 
soon went forth from the shadow of the cross 
and presently saw the Master risen from his 
broken tomb. American and other homes are 
in the times yet to be to find other revelations. 
Out of this college you go. Your four years 
here spent have been the four years of the war. 
Almost unconsciously to yourselves, the war 
has wrought upon you. The great results, 
which I have briefly interpreted, have been 
reenforced by the college days. These results 
your life, I hope, will also confirm. The 
effect of the past four years, I pray, may be the 
promise of like fruitage in the next four and 
forty years. May life increase to you its 
higher unities. May your thinking be direct 
without being narrow, and simple without 
being bare. May you become yet more and 
more worthy to cultivate the enlarged field of 
your own great choices. May you ever be 
possessed by a keen sense of rich trusteeship 

[2761 



THE WAR AND COLLEGE WOMEN 

for the world. May your religion become 
broader, deeper, more real, more vital; and 
may the moral passion for the best be your 
daily heritage and your hourly strength, at 
once your inspiration and your reward. I 
welcome you to a world in a year which needs 
you, your ablest, your best, as no former 
year has ever needed you. I summon you to 
glorious tasks, to the entrance into richest 
privileges. I hear your answer to the sum- 
mons, " Here am I. Send me." 



277 



MAY r ^ iQici 



